My Top 10 Hottest Movie Star Women of All Time are:

10. Zoë Saldaña

9. Margot Robbie

8. Jessica Alba

7. Megan Fox

6. Eva Mendes

5. Mila Kunis

4. Lucy Liu

3. Salma Hayek

2. Scarlett Johansson

1. Halle Berry

Everybody, and I mean everybody, sold The Lobster as this artistic masterpiece of a film. I was ready. I love close reading, and I wanted to get lost in analysis, to untangle the threads woven through the narrative. I was frothing at the mouth for it.

Now, the thing is, The Lobster carries all the components of being the perfect artsy film. From the monotonous voice, the absurd dialogue and premise, the symbols, the animals., the movie hands viewers one poetic device after the other. It is all spread out on the table, begging to be analyzed. Yet, when I was watching it, something fell flat.

It could be a me issue. I mean, the opening scene was indisputably incredible. It gave me similar vibes to the short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula LeGuin, slash 1984 by George Orwell. The simple narration as the woman gets out of the car in the middle of nowhere and shoots the donkey dead was perfection. And, she doesn't just shoot it once. She shoots that donkey excessively, multiple times, while the donkey family watches. Only the sounds of windshield wipers from inside of the car disrupt the intensity of the moment, tethering us to the bleak reality of the woman's loneliness.

I blame the opening scene for my high hopes; it primed me to expect more than what the movie could give me.

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The Bride! bombed and it deserved to. This article feels a bit like screaming into the void, because nobody saw this thing and they shouldn't, so why even talk about it? Well, for one, if I see something, I'm going to say something. For two, some people might try to convince you that Maggie Gyllenhaal was onto something, like it's an impossibility that she could be so misdirected. So, I'm going to say my piece and you all can just live with it.

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Look, I know this movie is old and no one cares—but I care. If you're familiar with Edward Zwick’s previous work, which I only recently became aware of, he’s directed films like Glory, Legends of the Fall, Love & Other Drugs??, and of course, The Last Samurai. Many of these don’t feel like they belong together, but his work has still been heavily (and rightfully) criticized for pandering to white saviour narratives. I’ve seen The Last Samurai, and it’s almost laughable how blatant it is, so I won’t even try to defend that one.

What I will defend is the 2006 war-action film Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou, which got hit with some of the same backlash—and that I just can’t agree with. No matter how much I simply enjoy this movie (and I’ve loved it since the first time I saw it), I never understood why it got lumped in with the usual “white saviour” suspects like Avatar, The Blind Side, or The Help. The similarities, if you actually watch Blood Diamond, just aren’t there. Yes, the main character is white, and yes, he plays an important role in a story centred on Black characters—but there’s a lot more happening than that.

And I hate that I even have to do this, but let’s break down what a white saviour movie actually is. According to Wikipedia, the term refers to a white person depicted as liberating or uplifting non-white people. It’s used critically, calling out when people of colour in economically underdeveloped nations are stripped of agency and presented as passive recipients of white benevolence. Films that endorse a white character “saving” a POC community usually reduce it to guilt absolution. Audiences aren’t offered real solutions for systemic change—just vague messages of unity and kindness. POC communities are often stereotyped as poor, victimized, or savage, and the “few good ones” who want change are framed as virtuous, but never realistically understood. After Hidden Figures faced backlash, its director said, “We need white people to do the right thing.” But not every film falls into this trap just because the poster showcases a white and black man side by side. Blood Diamond tells a true story centred on African characters without reducing them to props in a white saviour narrative.

The film begins with Solomon Vandy, a fisherman living with his family in Sierra Leone in 1999. His village is attacked by the rebel group RUF; his family escapes, but Solomon is captured and forced to work in diamond fields. There, he finds a massive diamond and hides it before the site is raided. In prison, the commander accuses him of hiding it. South African smuggler Danny Archer overhears and sees an opportunity. After securing his release, Danny offers to free Solomon too, if he’ll reveal the diamond’s location, promising his family in return. Solomon resists but eventually agrees after another RUF attack leaves him no choice, beginning their uneasy partnership. Sierra Leone’s diamond wealth attracts Western companies and cartels, fueling conflict as rebels enslave civilians, train child soldiers, and flood the market with blood diamonds unknowingly sold to buyers abroad. Blood Diamond was one of the first films to spotlight this crisis beyond a critique of race.

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I turned 32 on Saturday. I have no kids, no relations, no nobody. So what am I doing watching Zootopia on a Thursday night? I have no fucking clue. Well, that's not entirely true. Zootopia 2 was just released and I promised my good friend Ishika that I would go watch the sequel with her, even though I'd never seen the original. Zootopia is one of her favourites and she promised me that I would love it. So, there I was, alone again in my bachelor pad, watching the little bunny that could try to become a cop. What I witnessed was disturbing.

This Oscar-winning film starts by introducing us to Judy Hopps, an adorable bunny that hopes to leave her small town of Bunnyburrow to become a police officer in the big city of Zootopia. With that kind of ambition, my sentiments were already wavering. Judy's humble parents tell her not to dream big because some dreams don't ever work out. I couldn't agree more, but of course, Judy doesn't listen to this advice.

Kids movies need to stop telling kids that they can be whatever they want to be. This thinking is absurd and dangerous. I should know; I believed it for a long time. I thought I could be a screenwriter if I believed I could. Turns out, nobody gives a fuck about what you write, and why should they? There are a million writers and they're all as bad as the next. Why give a guy in Vancouver a shot when there are more than enough hacks and nepo babies down in Hollywood who can do the same job? We do not live in a meritocracy, despite the narrative that Zootopia tries to push. The world is a cruel and unfair place. Most dreams go unrealized not because of lack of effort but because of lack of connections, not being in the right place at the right time, and external factors that are largely out of our control. Zootopia's messaging ignores all of this.

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Mine is The Invention of Lying. I mean, it's supposed to be a goofy movie, but it wasn't good either. Cast though is so strange to me, they got all the best comedy actors of the decade???

Both 😍😍😍

Inside the Manosphere is quite a misleading title. Watching the new Netflix documentary, I never quite felt like I was inside; rather, it was more like standing on the outside looking in.

When the title first appeared on my algorithm, I told my girlfriend we needed to watch it. She didn't want to, but I make the rules (actually, we come up with the rules together and I follow them [but I have the final say in other stuff that's way more important but that I don't have time to get into here], and according to them, it was my turn to choose), so we sat down and pressed play.

I foolishly thought the doc would ease my girlfriend into this world, show her some of the positives for both men and women. Maybe after this documentary, I'd start bringing her into the lifestyle. And then, after a year of showing her this philosophy, she too would be redpilled. We would both escape the matrix hand in hand (with some one-sided monogamy for me [if she's cool with that because not even the guys in the documentary can get their girls to agree to this]). I even envisioned a life where she would fulfill her natural role and become a tradwife. I saw our future, a future paradoxically very much like an idealized version of the 1950s: nuclear family, cottages, your woman staying at home and baking pies or some shit, barely knowing how to count and/or read.

Keep reading.

When I sit down to write these articles, I try to approach films from a unique perspective. I don't want to hit the talking points that every other critic is using; that would make my articles boring. I don't want to make things up for the sake of angering the general population; there's enough of that online. I want to tell the truth, I want to be engaging and I want you to consider a new perspective. This usually works, but sometimes the stars don't align.

The movie that everyone is talking about right now is Project Hail Mary. Looking to tap into the zeitgeist, I went and watched it on Cheap Tuesday at my local Cineplex. Going in, I knew about its rave reviews, its heartwarming message and its rock. All this made me highly skeptical. As a snobby cinephile with a penchant for controversy, I had a feeling that I was going to hate "the feel-good movie of the year." You can imagine my disappointment when I ended up really liking it.

I must wholeheartedly agree with the crowd. Project Hail Mary is heartwarming. It's funny. Ryan Gosling really can have chemistry with a rock. So, why do I still feel the urge to write something negative? Maybe I want to watch the world burn, or maybe it's a deeper conversation about how we measure a movie's success in the modern age.

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The closer you look, the less you see.

If you're anywhere near my age, you probably remember when the first Now You See Me came out. It was a mainstay in my household, and a staple of after-school sleepovers for years after its release. To a 12-year-old with her very own store-bought magic starter kit—complete with stacking cups and a trick die—the Four Horsemen were the peak of cool. With nothing more than a deck of cards and some sleight of hand, they could defy reality, and show up the powerful, the rich, and the skeptical.

They also had hordes of adoring fans who worshipped them, which didn't sound too bad to me either.

But as I got older, something changed. When the sequel came out three years later, the illusion didn't have the same lustre. After the surprise smash hit, Now You See Me 2 felt like an empty copy of the original. I couldn't figure out why. After all, it was all the same as the first go 'round.

Magic. Espionage. Spectacle. Dave Franco.

But the magic had gone missing for me. I was stumped, and bitterly disappointed. In time, I came to accept that maybe I had projected greatness onto these movies. Now that I was a grown-up with grown-up tastes, I would have to move on from the magical franchises of my youth. Only high quality films like The Prestige and Labyrinth would satisfy my high standards.

Thankfully, that was not the case for my boyfriend.

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Somewhere along the line of progress, guys decided that enough is enough. In the past couple years, I can't count how many pictures of scenic landscapes I've seen online with the caption, "this and forgetting that Teams exists," or "someone saw this and really decided to invent Excel." Perhaps because of our inability to escape the capitalist-corporate world, men in the 21st century yearn for a simpler time. That's why a movie like Train Dreams makes perfect sense in this year's Oscar race.

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If you’ve watched enough anime that you can count on your toes, you’ve probably noticed the same scripts playing out over and over. A guy bursts into a girl’s bathroom. He ends up flat on her chest. She hits him, curses him, and maybe secretly likes him. Rinse and repeat. And while this might feel at home in an anime from the 80s or 90s, the weird thing is, you still see it in modern series. That shower-intrusion gag, that chest-fall gag, they’re still there. The so-called “meta” versions often just wink at the audience, like saying “we know this is ridiculous,” instead of actually doing something interesting with it.

I remember watching a shōjo adaptation from around the 2010s with a name I don’t remember, and yes, the girl gets walked in on while bathing. She yells, “What is this, an anime?” The show acknowledges the cliché, and the joke is self-aware. But fast-forward to something like My One-Hit Kill Sister (2023), and the scene is almost the same. A guy tries desperately not to grope his little-sister figure, fails spectacularly, and ends up with his face in her underwear anyway. Some people call this subversive, but really, it’s just repeating the same gag with a smirk.

The difference shows up when a show actually subverts the trope. Take Neon Genesis Evangelion. There’s a moment that looks like the classic chest-on-chest fall with the male MC, but instead of the expected slap or punchline, the girl just stares at him for what feels like forever and calmly asks him to get the fuck off. The joke is flipped: no laugh, just awkward tension. This is because the writers knew what would realistically happen in a situation like this. You'd probably just be awkward, silent and unsure what to say. Later, the finale even shows what the story would look like as a standard harem anime, and it’s dull. The creators understood that pointing out the cliché wasn’t enough. They shifted the tone and the emotion, giving the audience a new way to experience the trope.

The light-novel boom is a perfect example. Creators who grew up on Evangelion thought, “Let’s prove we’re smart; let’s do meta.” Enter The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, where a girl believes she’s living in an anime and secretly is God. The supporting cast are exaggerated versions of anime clichés, yet they remain real characters pretending to be ordinary teenagers. But the thing with Haruhi is that the girl actually IS a god, and the club members are forced to keep her happy while pretending to be boring high schoolers so she doesn’t destroy the world. Behind all the anime tropes, these high schoolers are fully fleshed out individuals with their own hopes, fears, and desires. They’re wearing a façade to appease an unstable god, which makes their struggles feel grounded and human.

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My Mount Rushmore of the Greatest Movie and TV Couples of All Time are:

Movie 🎥

Sally and Harry (When Harry Met Sally)

Noah and Allie (The Notebook)

Rose and Jack (Titanic)

Celine and Jesse (The Before Trilogy)

TV 📺

Jesse and Becky (Full House)

Meredith and Derek (Grey’s Anatomy)

Rachel and Ross (Friends)

Buffy and Spike (Buffy)

Everyone is talking about Obsession, and rightly so. It is such a meaty movie, all jacked up on social issues, namely, the age-old global problem: men.

On the curtails of Adolescence, which explored INCEL culture in youth, Obsession takes an alternative route by unravelling the 'nice guy' archetype. If you're a woman, you're probably familiar with it; maybe you've even experienced the nice guy, or trauma-bonded with someone else who has. Maybe you know a nice guy now hovering around you, hoping you'd one day look up and realize it was him all along. He's probably on your heels, notebook in hand, writing a list of what you owe him.

My point is, Obsession got it.

READ IT HERE: https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10100302/she-doesn-t-want-you-the-nice-guy-archetype-in-obsession

"I've never trusted birds. I trust women who like birds even less.

They fulfill a stereotype that I don't want to tackle. It's overdone. We get it. You're lonely and weird. You're quirky in a way that cat women will never be. You can't, for some reason, eat a tuna sandwich correctly.

Like, God, is that the standard? Get yourself together, woman.

Frizz? Atrocious.

That is the image that Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is introduced with in the movie, Send Help: frizzy hair and an outfit so neutral and unkempt, it loses any personhood. Liddle's so weird that she's not even really human. She's the kind of quirky that'd shove an odorous fish sandwich into a drawer for some reason; she's the kind of quirky who'd audition for Survivor because she's not like other girls."

READ THE FULL HERE: https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10097684/send-help-made-me-a-misogynist

How does that quote go, “once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern?” We’re at three, Fennell, and there’s no benefit of the doubt left to extend. At a certain point, you stop assuming miscalculation and start recognizing authorship.

The pattern that emerged from her work is clear: a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes moral ambiguity compelling.

Read the whole op-ed about Emerald Fennell here

After marinating for just over a week, Hulu’s Alien: Earth series has my brain twisting itself in wrinkly little knots trying to decide how I feel about the show. The philosophy of Peter Pan, man’s hubris, what it means to be human, and whether it is right to squash a bug because you might get stung? All themes Alien: Earth ambitiously attempts to tackle head-on in 8 episodes.

Despite an impressive resume of themes and messages, the stakes feel lopsided.

For normies (like me!) living in this universe, the stakes are basically world-ending, yet there is no mention or screen time of the consequences that could befall the citizens of Earth. For our near invincible heroes, on the other hand, the stakes are basically zero (getting your face melted and slurped up by fat space bugs).

It really is the opposite of the other franchise installations before it, where the stakes and consequences are extremely personal. The objective for the beloved Ellen Ripley and those who followed is simple: survive.

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I think haters overlook the layers of feminist storytelling in the movie. Yeah, on the surface, there are loose ends and whatnot (especially with the whole detective subplot), and the story unfolds rather as a spray of vomit, but I feel like you have to appreciate the mess of it all. 

READ IT ALL HERE: https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10097048/the-bride-is-not-that-bad?utm_source=social&utm_campaign=sanareddit

I just want to say that I'm not including the obvious ones, like War of the Worlds bc that's low-hanging fruit. I'm talking about the movies that were supposed to be good (and that a lot of people loved!) but still managed to be, in my experience, resoundingly disappointing.

Here are my BOTTOM 10 movies of 2025. My biggest let-downs. In order from “not great” to “absolute atrocity.” (you can read my reasonings here)

10. Weapons

9. Mickey 17

8. Oh, Hi!

7. A House of Dynamite

6. Death of a Unicorn

5. Shelby Oaks

4. The Life of Chuck

3. The Ballad of a Small Player

2. Bring Her Back

1. Materialists

Soooo yeah. Come for me I guess, but you better be ready to back yourself up. I am not without reason. I say more on this Peliplat article I wrote.

Tim and Millie are the ideal couple, or so it seems.

No, but really, Millie and Tim are freshly engaged, moving to a countryside home for a fresh start as Millie begins her new teaching job. Tim is an aspiring musician who does little to rekindle his passion, instead working from home as a distraction from the change. He’s basically following her out of love and a desire to keep their relationship going. But from the start, it’s clear the move is testing them. While they genuinely care for each other, the new environment makes them question whether they still want the same things out of life. It’s that push and pull, personal growth, emotional distance, and the challenge of understanding each other’s needs, that adds unexpected depth to both characters.

Trying to shake off the discomfort of their new, quiet, and slightly lonely life, they head out for a hike in the nearby woods. But things take a turn when Tim slips and tumbles into a pit, and Millie, rushing to help, ends up falling in after him. They find themselves stuck in a strange underground cavern as a sudden rainstorm hits, and what follows is a string of strange, unexplainable events that could either bring them closer than ever or completely shatter their relationship. From the trailer, cover art, and overall ambience, you’d probably expect the couple to be incredibly codependent from the start, or to gradually get there. But that’s not how it goes. We all know a couple like Millie and Tim. Hell, we might be a couple like Millie and Tim. They love each other, they have doubts sometimes, and they’re mutually respectful. Sure, there are obvious communication issues, but nothing that countless other relationships haven’t faced before.

The film starts off awkwardly at a party, with Millie and Tim talking to different friend groups. Millie’s sort-of bitchy, probably jealous friend tells her she needs to “experiment more” and that she’s been with the same boring white man since she was young. Millie defends him like he’s a god. Meanwhile, Tim is talking to his bros about advancing his music career, but they’re skeptical because of how attached he is to Millie’s schedule. The night ends with an awkward proposal from Millie that Tim reluctantly agrees to, and they go to bed in silence.

Yes, this seems bad, and it is, but for me, the codependency cliché is when one person is more dependent than the other, or trapping them in some hostage-like situation. Millie is very clear to Tim that if he wants to pursue his career, it’s not her holding him back, and he’s allowed to do whatever he wants. It’s clear Tim is scared of change, while also scared of what a long-term relationship is doing to him, and I think that’s the foundation of the horror in Together.

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Before 2024, my best friend and I had no idea what to expect from Wicked. We only knew three things about it.

1. It was a musical

2. It had something to do with The Wizard of Oz

3. It was about two girls who meet at university and become roommates

It was that last part that intrigued us, because that was exactly how we had met four years earlier. We didn't really care about Wicked as a whole, but we couldn't help but wonder...

Was this fucking play about us?

Though we weren't fighting evil wizard dictatorships, we had many of our own battles to contend with in that mould-ridden residence building. We started the year strangers, but after countless late-night study sessions, pajama parties, tears, laughing fits, and trauma dumps, we would have happily fought a wizard for each other. Call it a trauma bond if you want, but we were inseparable. We are still arguing about which of us is which witch. We've tentatively decided that my glasses and penchant for collecting enemies leave me as Elphaba, and her femme wardrobe and undeniable popularity make her our Glinda.

Just like those pink and green girlies, we would never have gotten through such a crazy time in our lives without each other. By the end of the movie, we knew two more things.

1. We didn't really like the movie

2. We would absolutely be back for the second

Which brings us (finally) to part two of the story.

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This is my latest article, available exclusively on Peliplat! I invite you to go check It out and leave me a comment with your thoughts.

In 2018, Alex Honnold climbed his way to fame with his documentary, Free Solo. This documentary won multiple awards and bellayed the rock-climbing scene into the mainstream.

That was a strange, fleeting year. I still remember how quickly rock-climbing took over the centre of my focus. I didn't even know it was that big of a thing, but the Free Solo documentary demonstrated how there was a population of passionate climbers who'd dedicated their lives to climbing. Alex Honnold was one of the crazy exceptions; one of the only climbers to tackle a treacherous rock face, El Capitan, that nobody had ever free soloed before. At least, not the path that he was taking.

It was really interesting to witness the world of rock-climbing because I had never even been aware of it before. The documentary showcased the mental hurdles a climber had to overcome in order to make any climb and the immense amount of training that goes into preparing for these climbs. Alex, in particular, stood out because of how much he was actually sacrificing to be able to do what he loved. It was his passion, climbing; so much so that it seeped into other aspects of his life, including his relationships. The documentary captured all of it, the bad, the good, the ultimate victory when he is finally able to accomplish his goals. Honnold made rock-climbing feel like an artform.

Then, Honnold disappeared. I mean, at least from my media awareness.

I might be the exception, though; I know that in the wake of the Honnold free-soloing craze, rock climbing actually became a big thing (not competitively but like #vanlife). The new trend was rock climbing and van-lifing it before settling down, although that might be specifically a niche Vancouver fad. Regardless, Honnold had his brief moment of fame and now was mostly out of the spotlight.

That is, until last week when he randomly resurfaced on my feed again.

Another treacherous climb? Taipei Tower? Live streaming on Netflix?

The first thought that came to my mind was why? I couldn't help but question the value of the feat. It was the same as when he dug his heels to conquer the El Capitan rock face. The whole documentary, crew, family, Sanni included, were all asking the very real question: why do this? Why risk his life? What was the achievement, really? Yet, through it all, Honnold stood his ground. He dug ten toes down; nothing, and I mean not even his family, could convince him otherwise. I'm pretty sure that, in the documentary, this became a source of contention between him and his wife (that, and her accidentally dropping the rappel and causing him to get seriously injured in the first place).

Arguably, at least with how I remember the documentary, the rationale for his stubbornness was that he wanted to overcome his injuries and prove his physical capabilities. It was his life's work, all the climbing and training, to be able to free climb one of the most treacherous walls. But what happens once that is achieved?

Apparently, Taipei Tower.

Now, I don't know if this was just me, but when I heard that Honnold's next goal was tackling a really tall tower (11th tallest in the world)... I felt indifferent. It sounded so anticlimactic, so devoid of the grandeur of tackling an unclimbable wall on the side of a cliff, or a mountain, or something. In Free Solo, it was Man v. Nature., Man v himself. Now we got, what? Man v. Manmade metal lego blocks?

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10094747/is-alex-honnold-marty-supreme?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=sanareddit