Inspired by my friend Ben Hong (no longer logging), who got the idea from Jen Myers, I am continuing the practice of tracking my media consumption this year.
Key: (B) = book |(F) = film | (T) = television series (completed season) | (L) = live performance (theater, music, comedy, etc.) | (A) = album (music) | (G) = video game | (C) = stand-up comedy special | [R] = reread/rewatch
Logged during the month I completed the unit. For example, I log a full season of a TV show after watching the last episode of the season, whether I began the season that day or years earlier, I log a game or album when I complete the entire thing, etc.
It’s been an exciting time for Asian representation in Hollywood cinema. We’ve been seeing more actors of Asian descent portray more types of characters than past decades have chosen to depict, and we’re getting to recognize a much larger number of familiar Asian faces portraying them as well!
A few months ago, I was invited to an early press screening for Joy Ride, the upcoming directorial debut from Adele Lim, who has previously written for Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon. The trailer first crossed my social media feed via this tweet from Phil Yu, aka Angry Asian Man:
Fuck yeah! JOY RIDE. I am absolutely here for the Asian American women-led raunchy comedy. pic.twitter.com/mWLfK5xuwc
I don’t usually seek out raunchy comedies, but modern entries in the genre have been getting really fun with this nugget of an emotional core that has been increasingly better-executed than past generations. To see one led by an all-Asian and all-woman cast is really exciting, and the trailer looked funny! Would we get something like Girls Trip for millennial Asians?
TL;DR Yes! Joy Ride is such a fun ride from start to finish. It is packed with laughs, save a beat at the end where we explore its emotional core to incredible success, and manages to avoid relying on Asian-American comedy tropes that have become tired.
This cast is stellar, and I was so excited about the cameo appearances from other Asian actors who I recognized from Marvel, a favorite HBO show, Crazy Rich Asians, and more. In a time when there is validity to the complaint that certain Asian actors become popular and get cast in “everything” or will often appear in movies and TV shows together, it’s really nice to see just how many Asian characters we have been getting recently in movies and TV and the increased diversity in just the casting of these characters. And don’t worry, with 2 Broadway musical actresses in main cast, we do indeed get a bonkers musical number.
Honestly, I went into this movie thinking it would be a pretty shallow roadtrip movie with some toilet humor and too many jokes about Asian diaspora that are overdone, in my opinion as someone who has been in the Asian culture space for a long time. But I was really pleasantly surprised that this movie managed to be so irreverently funny while still having a strong emotional core, touching on Asian-American identity in a way that felt fresher than I’ve seen in a while in addition to topics like internalized racism, cultural barriers, sex positivity, artistic expression, queer identity, family dynamics and expectations, and more. And it does so while still showing some truly unhinged moments that I could not believe my eyes at.
Also, if the think pieces and blog posts are any indication, many people only venture out to the movie theater for huge action movies and/or to avoid having a big franchise storyline spoiled during opening weekend. I had forgotten how much fun it is to watch a comedy with a full theater laughing together. I’ll admit you may get annoyed about not being able to hear some dialogue over particularly raucous laughter but it really enhances the experience when you’re able to let loose and laugh out loud at a comedy versus watching something alone and quietly. Plus, not only did my theater laugh out loud throughout much of the movie, but the emotional beat the end had many of us crying, with the sounds of sniffles and a “girl are you crying right now??” heard from all around me, a very unexpected surround sound experience to get from this movie.
Joy Ride is in theaters TODAY, July 7th. Spoilers below the jump if you’d like to read more thoughts~
Perhaps my longest-running blog post series aside from my resolutions, we finally arrive at my 2022 new movie releases round-up! Letterboxd says I watched a grand total of 72 films this year, including some not-feature-length things I logged. I log everything I watched on my 2022 Media Log but I really like my over a decade-long (!!) tradition of listing the new release feature films I watch every year on this blog. (Older movie round-ups live with my old blog in Davy Jones’s locker somewhere now.)
In the wake of last year, this year felt very different for movie-lovers. For one thing, we were able to (kind of, almost) safely return to theaters. And many projects that had been delayed last year were released this year. It felt like a much more… hopeful? year for the movies. At the same time, streaming really had a strong year. Many of the movies I saw were streaming-exclusive, during a year when the IATSE nearly had to strike due poor work conditions and lower wages for the “disadvantaged” streaming companies, compared to traditional Hollywood studios.
This year, I also successfully used Letterboxd to log every movie I watched, so you can head over there to see every movie I watched this year beyond this year’s releases, and you can look at my 2021 Media Log to see everything I watched, read, and listened to this year.
Here are the 2021 releases I watched this year:
Movie posters from all the 2021 releases I watched this year
So… … it’s been a really rough year for movies, among other things. I can’t even really differentiate movies I watched in theaters and not, since movies stopped being shown in theaters a long time ago and many movies that I was looking forward to seeing this year have been delayed to next year.
In the olden days , I’ve noted the exceptions that were watched outside of their theatrical release, as in I had to watch them on a streaming service or even on an airplane. Well… this year, the only movies I saw in theaters were originally released in December 2020. Every new release I saw this year was on a streaming service. (I only saw 2 movies in theaters, back in January.)
But I did still watch a lot of movies, many of which were released this year. (If you’d like to see every movie I watched this year, regardless of release year, you can check my Media Log. I am thinking tracking movies on Letterboxd next year, after years of neglect, so let me know if that is something you use and you can add me!)
Without further ado, here are the 2020 releases I saw this year:
Collage of posters for movies watched in 2020Read More »
Sip of Starrshine 