We’re feeling personally victimised by April. Mercury Retrograde, you know what you did. Same goes for you Solar Eclipse. Jupiter-Uranus Conjunction, you can stay, but we’ll be keeping an eye on you.
Against all odds, we’ve managed to overcome technical difficulties and a sense of impending doom to add some very special new books to the shop. Among other gems, we have a queer cinema classic, a very gorgeous and extremely rare programme from the Cannes Film Festival premiere of La Reine Margot and a book on swimming pool cinema that is so dreamy we’d actually quite like to keep it for a while.
We’re repeating our call for conundrums. Send us your low-stakes angst for our Film Prescription/Film Pharmacy/Agony Aunt advice column and we’ll prescribe some cinematic drugs.
xoxo Zodiac
Lately we’ve been watching…
Miller’s Girl - Downloaded Tiktok for a week and got clued on to the film all the young people are talking about. For those who don’t know, it’s a 90s-style erotic thriller about a young pupil’s (Jenna Ortega) dangerous obsession with her creative writing teacher (Martin Freeman, if you can believe it) and everyone on the internet is collectively asking how it could possibly have got made today. So we obviously had to watch it immediately because we are drawn like pervy moths to the lightbulb of controversy.
The Anniversary - Watched during a cute Zodiac date to the BFI Mediatheque (you can sit there with headphones and watch films for free). Bette Davis brings her Hagsploitation talents to the unsettlingly weird world of British exploitation and wears an eyepatch while doing it.
Ripley - Not even Andrew Scott can save this unnecessary and meh adaptation.
Serious/Not Serious: 🎭
Serious: Hyacinths (the technicolor-hued, intensely scented floozies of the plant world), dumb phones, calling breasts “baps”, communicating using the language of flowers, first grass cuttings in the park, shared 8am writing sessions, our Oxfam sale book haul.
Not Serious: The entire month of April.
Films for Aries Season ♈
There’s a reason Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac, it’s so the rest of the signs can stand behind them in an orderly queue waiting for the ram to organise their schedules. Where would we all be if fiery Aries didn’t get the ball rolling at the start of each astrological year?
Even if your particular Aries friend detests the gym and avoids games of rounders in the park like the plague (we’re with them on that tbh, grow up rounders players) their strength, drive and competitive natures still make them a spiritual match for the sports film genre. Get a healthy dose of endorphins from your sofa this month with films about physical activity.
Aries babes include: Bette Davis, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Victoria Beckham, Cynthia Nixon, Simone Signoret and Anya Taylor Joy.
To foster some can-do Aries attitude, our first rec is an inspiring look at what can be achieved on a low budget ($10,000) with the most enthusiastic cast we’ve ever encountered (you’ll see). Set during the making of a soft-core fitness tape, this film has everything: a Type-A, right-wing fitness fanatic with a killer work ethic; a bandana-wearing biker girl forced to take part by her porn producer/crime matriarch mother “to straighten her out” (ah, the logic of parenting); himbos, bimbos and multiple serial killers on the loose. This homage to 80s slashers combines key Aries characteristics: ambition, libido and getting your baps out. Nothing is as intimidating as a pair of tits!
PS. It’s free to watch on Plex.
There is nothing more perfectly suited to curing the Mercury Retrograde blues than Blue Crush, a film that manages to make the genuinely serious issues of class inequality, gentrification, PTSD, and having two different-coloured eyes into a low-stakes, feel-good romp in the sand. There’s so much pain in the world, but not in this incredibly yellow-tinted early-noughties chick flick. Surfer Anne Marie lives with her two best friends on Hawaii’s North Coast, where the three do everything together in a sort of feminist communal-living dream, from surfing the early morning waves to working as maids in a luxury hotel and raising Anne Marie’s little sister Penny.
Anne Marie’s upcoming participation in a professional surf competition is threatened by her experience of a near-fatal wipeout three years before, and her burgeoning romance with an NBA football player staying at the hotel (unconvincingly played by Warner from Legally Blonde). Both the fact that a professional athlete would perhaps be the ideal person to help Anne Marie with the yips, and the fact that she appears to already be in a relationship with her best mate and co-parent Michelle Rodriguez, who stays in and watches Anne Marie’s childhood surf competition videos while Anne Marie goes out on dates, seem to have escaped the screenwriters’ notice. But no matter, we defy anyone who watches Blue Crush not to at least consider peace-ing out on late-stage capitalism and dedicating themselves to a life of surfing and menial labour in sunnier climes.
Girlhood, coming-of-age, mass psychogenic illness and mystery — sometimes a film is so far up our street it practically lives next door. While hanging around at the gym her older brother takes boxing lessons at, 11-year-old Toni catches a glimpse of a dance team rehearsal — a hypnotic, glittering blue vision of older girls with tantalising names like ‘Legs’ and ‘Karisma’. As Toni embarks on her journey with the team and becomes gradually more confident on the dance floor, a wave of swooning and seizures begins to make its way through the group. Is the mysterious sickness something to be feared or desired?
Fun Fact: The Fits was cast with members of a real life dance team. Our fave tidbit about the making of this film is that each girl’s “fit” was choreographed individually and in private, so the others only saw it for the first time on the day of filming.
Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951)
The title of this Ida Lupino joint having prepared us for a tale of mean streetwise floozies from the wrong side of the tracks, this is actually a tale of how ambition is actually bad for you (sorry Aries).
Millie, a beautiful woman with material dreams beyond those of the unambitious husband she scorns, sees a ticket to the high life through finagling her malleable tennis prodigy daughter, Florence, into an international tennis career. Yet impressionable Florence falters in her path, thanks to the moral indignation of her emasculated boyfriend. Will she choose tennis so she gets to travel the world as a star, and Millie can get a new car? Or is being rich, famous, and successful a terrible betrayal of the men in her life (i.e. her humble father and angrily defensive boyfriend)? And what will Millie do if her daughter no longer plays ball?
TBH Millie’s behaviour all felt totally above board to us — mothers deserve fancy stuff! Are sponsorship deals really so bad? We’d much rather win Wimbledon than marry the assistant manager of a Philadelphia country club… Maybe WE’RE the hard, fast and beautiful ones?
Honourable Mentions: Gregory’s Girl (1981), Girlfight (2000), Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985).
Recommended Reading, Watching, Listening 📚
Every now and then, you read an article that you wish you’d written. For us this month it was Anthony Lane’s piece on Alain Delon and beauty for the New Yorker. Archived here if you’ve read all your free ones for the month.
For sure, Alain Delon’s 1960s-era face gives us a pain in the womb, but the best Tom Ripley is still Matt Damon. To express our eternal loyalty to Anthony Minghella’s 1999 take on the Patricia Highsmith novel over the new Netflix version, we’ve spent this week listening to the soundtrack and dreaming of full-colour holidays to Mongibello.
Speaking of Toms, we’re currently obsessed with the TikTok account someoneiworkwith. If you’re new here, here’s the lowdown. An anonymous girl started filming Tom, the guy she has a crush on at work, making these gorgeous little low-fi videos tenderly infused with girlish longing and desire. Over the course of a matter of weeks, the account reached over 90k followers, Tom found out, human resources found out… but still it continues. Weirdly gripping. This is the stalking story Netflix should be adapting.
Off-screen Gossip 🍸
The witness statements surrounding a legendary Hollywood mystery may soon be made available to the public. Get ready to hear more details about the diabolical clam chowder PCP poisoning perpetrated on the set of Titanic.