Bubby and Pop – my mom’s parents – were my favorite people in the world. We lost Pop in September 2018 and Bubby in March 2024. I’m currently working on publishing a children’s book based on my adventures with them, but until then, here are the words I spoke at their funerals.
Read MoreLogo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.
Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:
1. The Frozen Waffle
The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.
2. The Soggy Waffle
You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.
3. The Microwaved Waffle
This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.
4. The Crispy Waffle
Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.
5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle
This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.
I consumed a lot of pop culture this year, movies and otherwise. So before I turn the Soggy Waffles sights onto 2022, I thought it would be fitting to recap the highlights of 2021. Without further ado, here’s the 2021 Perfectly Toasted Year in Review.
Read MoreDare I say Palm Springs is the best movie of 2020 so far? That would be a bold-ass statement coming from someone who is admittedly very behind on this year’s movies. But compared to like the two movies I have seen, yeah I’d say it’s no-contest.
Read MoreFor someone who claims to love movies as much as yours truly, I’ve caught surprisingly few flicks over the past few months. And of the few I have watched, I haven’t felt compelled to write about them. That is…
Until now.
Read MoreTrolls World Tour has all the shine and gloss of the first movie (it still earns a 10/10 Trippy Rating), but it’s largely, disappointingly forgettable. And now that we all have all the time in the world to consume content, studios are going to have to do better to earn our attention.
Read MoreWhat’s particularly confounding isn’t that Pixar kicked off the decade with such a mediocre entry into their canon – it’s why they want (or at least planned) to release two movies in the same year with such similar storylines.
Read MorePete Davidson and Griffin Gluck have great chemistry together, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll forget this movie exists in a year’s time.
Read MoreHoney Boy is certainly not the first coming-of-age movie about confronting the demons of one’s childhood, but it’s unique in that the making of the movie is the biggest confrontation in itself.
Read MoreMost war movies are a slog, but 1917 keeps the momentum moving and never quite lets up.
Read MoreEverybody’s Everything is a fitting tribute to a generation-defining artist who never got to be that.
Read MoreEveryone who sees Jojo Rabbit will have their own unique reaction to the movie, including every Jewish person. I do not speak for all of my people, only myself. And as a Jewish person who is particularly sensitive to Holocaust jokes and anti-Semitism, who has walked the tracks of Auschwitz and lived to see the inside and outside of a gas chamber, all I can say is this – Jojo Rabbit fucking rules.
Read MoreNever have I ever sat through an entire movie and not understood a single thing about it. NOT A SINGLE THING!
Read MoreEvery so often, a movie comes along that *literally* everyone who sees it urges the uninitiated to go into it knowing as little a possible. This is one of those movies. So do yourself a favor – stop fucking reading and buy a ticket already.
Read MoreJoker’s greatest offense is its failure to properly psychoanalyze its protagonist. So when Arthur Fleck (and likewise the movie) finally descends into madness, it doesn’t feel earned. Or for that matter, believable.
Read MoreMost space movies feel claustrophobic, but Ad Astra didn’t. Instead of chest-tightening tight shots, each shot is filled with enough emotion to pack a punch Brad Pitt right in his pretty boy mouth. And Pitt, by the way, is definitely (inter)stellar as an astronaut on a mission to find the father who may not be the hero he’s romanticized.
Read MoreHustlers is not an unfamiliar story, nor is it told in an unfamiliar way. And yet, it’s one of the most refreshing movies of the year. Never has a movie set in 2007 felt so 2019.
Read MoreFull transparency here: While the idea to save all my summer movies review for one end-of-summer extravaganza is an amazing one, it mostly spawned from my own laziness. I got behind on one review, then two, then three, then four. Eventually I was just like, shit, I need a break. But now I’m back, bitches!
Read MoreIt’s the best movie musical since Hairspray (come at me Mamma Mia bros) and the best music biopic since four young men from Compton told us to fuck the police. Rocketman is what Across the Universe wanted to be and what everyone somehow mistook Bohemian Rhapsody to be. It’s some of the most fun you’ll have at the movies all year.
Read MoreWhen the end-of-the-decade lists start popping up at the end of the year, “Booksmart” will undoubtedly go down as one of the best high school movies of the decade. Like the best coming of age comedies before it, it’s relevant and timeless all at once (and has a killer soundtrack).
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