Pea Arts About

*Spoilers ahoy* I can’t remember how it came up in conversation, but himself indoors didn’t believe me that there had been a second X-Files movie. Although he watched the show when it was first broadcast, he has clearly never been an ‘X-phile’. His lack of awareness of the film is perhaps indicative of the show’s continuing cult status. Even when I informed him that my DVD copy was in our house, he remained sceptical. Upon returning home, I produced the undeniable evidence. He decided that it was the next film we should watch, so we did the following evening. We had to pause a few times so I could catch him up and explain a few in-jokes planted for the fans, e.g., why Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) share a bed, the pencils in the office ceiling, and so on.  It had been quite a while since I last viewed the film, probably not since I got the DVD when it came out, and some aspects niggle at me now that I’ve had critical distance from it and poss

I came away with mixed feelings after seeing Girls Trip (dir. Malcolm D. Lee, 2017) at the weekend. It was refreshing to see a movie featuring someone different to the usual gamut of white guys, and to see women being riotously funny. I usually don't enjoy gross-out humour, but in some set-pieces Girls Trip had me giggling behind my hand. More of that and the throwing of shade and the dance-offs with less of the needless schmaltz and conflicts and I would have enjoyed it much more. An aspect I couldn't overcome at all was the Sex and the City -level privilege of wealth oozing out of the film and most of its characters, even from Queen Latifah's character, Sasha, who is supposedly broke. During the film, I found myself thinking about Céline Sciamma's Bande de Filles/Girlhood (2014) and wishing I was re-watching that instead of a bunch of wealthy women getting away with violence because their statuses and bank balances and praying to baby Jesus could make it go away.