Welcome to the Weekend Snack - a quick roundup of my favorite bites from the past weekend.
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Happy Sunday! Spring has *hopefully* sprung in New York, and I’ve had a weekend full of absolutely delicious content that I can’t wait to share with you. My general takeaway from the last few days was a reminder that stories are often best with an audience. So get out there and see something with your fellow humans! Even if you make the underrated choice of going alone. I saw Saltburn by myself with a sold-out, raucous Los Angeles movie crowd and didn’t have to share my Junior Mints - a win all around. So take yourself or someone you care about and see some culture in this lovely spring weather. With that call to action, here are this week’s recs:
🎬 Love Lies Bleeding. This is Director/Screenwriter Rose Glass’ follow-up to her wild first film, Saint Maud (one of the most bonkers movie-ending sequences I’ve ever seen). It tells the story of Lou (Kristen Stewart), a New Mexico gym manager with a haunted past who falls fast in love with Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder on her way to a Las Vegas competition. Their intense love affair takes a dark turn as more is revealed about Lou’s family (Ed Harris plays Lou’s dad in an all-timer wig), and we’re left to ponder whether love really does conquer all. True to film noir conventions, Love Lies Bleeding is a dark, visceral (people say this all the time - but truly, this is VISCERAL) and violent story with a last act that goes off the rails. It’s like a lesbian, mullet-filled Thelma and Louise meets Drive meets Pulp Fiction with some David Cronenberg influence sprinkled in. Kristen Stewart is cast perfectly in what feels like the role she’s been dying to play, and her chemistry with Katy O’Brian is palpable. She had me asking - is the mullet back?? This probably isn’t for you if you don’t like film noir, but I have a feeling it will catch the internet’s attention a la Saltburn. Though there were some storylines I would’ve liked to see further developed, it’s a vibey film and the type of movie you should absolutely see in a packed theater. There were multiple moments where people audibly gasped, and that’s so much more fun to experience as a group.
🎭 The Hunt at St. Ann’s Warehouse. It’s slightly annoying for me to share this as a rec because the show closes next week, and I think it is pretty much sold out (though people are having luck with the cancellation line), but it’s too good not to talk about. A transfer show from London, The Hunt is a modern-day parable that tells the story of a small-town kindergarten teacher (an astonishing Tobias Menzies) who is falsely accused of molesting a student and the town’s ensuing investigation (a generous term, as it’s more of a witch hunt). The staging is simple but brilliant - what looks like a tiny home on a rotating turntable that magically alternates from opaque to transparent, revealing something new each time. It’s a complicated subject matter presented in a way that has you thinking about truth, mob rule, and what comes after “resolution.” I walked out thinking, “And that’s why we go see live theater, folks!” It's my favorite play I’ve seen this year.
📺 Girls5eva. And now for something completely different... If dark and twisty isn’t your bag, I started watching Girls5eva, and it’s a fun, lighthearted, but clever time. It originally aired on Peacock, but the latest season has found a new home on Netflix. If you loved 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, this is for you (it’s Executive Produced by Tina Fey and her recurring collaborator Robert Carlock). A one-hit-wonder girl group from the 90’s reunites after a young rapper samples their song. But, now in their forties with spouses, debt, and general adulthood malaise, the reunion is not as glamorous as their lives used to be. Even being silly, Sara Bareilles crushes it. See what I mean below in this song her character wrote in a hunger-induced Dolly Parton-inspired hallucination (wild sentence):
And since we began with Saltburn, I’ll leave you with my favorite Murder on the Dancefloor TikTok that hits too close to home if you live in New York.
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