#times these characters are not allowed to be hot: every other moment that they're onscreen

[eugeniedanglars]

why is the costuming department on this show so wack though. why doesn't buck seem to own a single outfit that looks like something a human being would actually wear

[trungles]

Regarding your winter romcoms: just wanted to say you have truly IMPECCABLE taste in films (which is to say that we have the *same* movie taste), and it makes me love you/your art all the more. Any other suggestions? Ultimte favorite films? Do share!

HELLO, it has been a hot dang minute since I did one of these, and I'm pretty sure this question was dropped into my inbox closer to Christmas of 2022. So. Thank you very much for your kind words, anonymous, and apologies for the very long delay!

This is a fun question, though, so I really wanted to answer it eventually. Forgive the typos, grab your popcorn and your Red Vines (the best licorice-ish candy, I WILL FIGHT YOU no I won't but I love them), and let's go through my favorite comfort-watch movies. They're mostly rom-coms and coming-of-age movies for teens.

As a general caveat, I am not a big movie person at all. I know basically nothing about film. You will find no sensitive critique or analysis here. My favorite movies are all VIBES. I'm also not a big horror/thriller/bloody violence sort of person, so I don't watch many of those, which is weird because a goodly number of my dearest friends are horror film buffs. Also, I have made it a habit, in my adulthood, to go watch movies that I wasn't allowed to watch or didn't have access to as a kid. I'm a first-and-a-half generation immigrant to the United States, so my way of getting comfortable with American culture was to sort of approximate its vibes by absorbing its popular culture almost anthropologically? So in this post I'll maybe go over why I like it, and I might mention some of the things that have not aged super well because, as I'm sure you know, every single thing ever made cannot help being a product of the time it was made. I believe in being able to watch these things critically, enjoying them as they are, understanding that everybody's mileage may vary, and that not everything I like will be for everyone. I'm mostly including this bit because it's internet and people don't always know how to simply disengage with things they don't like.

In my Winter Movie post, I recommended The Holiday, When Harry Met Sally, Single All the Way, Moonstruck, and While You Were Sleeping, so I won't go over those again. Let's kick this off with something to help manage everybody's expectations.

The McG-directed Charlie's Angels movies, 2000 and 2003. Both of them.

I actually saw the second one first. It was one of the first PG-13 movies I ever saw in theatres, and it sort of just imprinted in my psyche, I think? They're just fun. They're real fuckin' fun. Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, and Drew Barrymore have great onscreen chemistry, and the cheesy wire-fu sequences are so ham-fisted that they delight me. These movies know exactly what they are, and they're very up-front about being Movies, particularly the second one where every scene seems to have an Old Hollywood pastiche. The first one has a bit of very odd brownface moments that I did not love upon rewatch.

Singin' in the Rain, 1952

I saw this movie for the first time when I was in middle school, and I was absolutely obsessed. It was the very first time I realized that the movies had its own histories, and that there was a transition of culture when there was a change in technology. Also, I just loved watching Gene Kelly dance, for gay reasons. Plus, Rita Moreno is in it for a split second, and she's divine.

Clueless, 1995

This movie rules, I don't know what else to say. It's a fantastic Austen adaptation, and while I was too young to catch this in the 90s, it felt great catching up with this one as an adult. I think it also helped me contextualize what other kids were into in the 90s, so I retroactively feel less isolated from my peers. It's a weird sort of magic. It's also strange to me, in hindsight, that in 1995 there was an enormous hit teen movie where there is a gay character who is treated incredibly lovingly for the time? Like, no gay trauma, no homophobic bullying, no nothing. He's just there, and he gets folded into the rest of the story and remains important to the main character's life? I'd have loved that as a kid.

Shanghai Noon, 2000

The year 2000 was an incredible time for goofy action comedies, and this one was formative for me. It's extremely silly and embarrassing to admit, but this movie was the first time I learned about how Chinese railroad workers built the transcontinental railroads in the later 1800s. I first saw it as a rental from the local video store, and my parents let me watch it because my dad liked Jackie Chan movies. It's... very 2000 in its treatment of racial politics, but you could reasonably argue that not too much has changed since.

The Princess Bride, 1987

I don't need to explain this to anyone.

Four Weddings and a Funeral, 1994

God, you can see the accent on Hugh Grant's mouth. I don't know why I love this movie as much as I do. I came to it a bit later in my teen years, and I'd watch it again every few years. It's grown on me more and more as the years go on. It's the only British-American ensemble production that I really latched onto, and it's in no small part because the supporting cast is so much fun to watch.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. I watch it probably three or four times a year. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star as two showgirls who embark on a cruise to France to work around the machinations of an old millionaire who refuses to let his son marry Monroe's character. It's got that iconic Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend number, and it has one of the best third-act thesis statement speeches I've ever heard in any era. It's a great old musical.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, 2008

This is a gem that I missed back in 2008 because I was graduating high school at the time and had other things going on (being queer at a Catholic high school in the 2000s sucked ass, btw, let this ol' geezer tell ya). Frances McDormand plays a conservative governess who can't hold down a job because she, being a preacher's daughter, is a morally upright Amelia Bedelia. Out of desperation, she scams her way into becoming the social secretary for a bubbly young actress played by Amy Adams, and they spend a wild and heartwarming day together where Frances McDormand's character navigates wartime, friendship, and romance. This is also the movie that made me develop an embarrassing crush on Lee Pace (not because Lee Pace is embarrassing, I just hate having crushes on famous actors because I know, at the end of the day, that they're just weird theatre kids who have money now). It's based on a novel written in 1938, and it's aged surprisingly well.

Sailor Moon SuperS, 1995

I borrowed the VHS for this movie from the library as often as I could in the second or third grade. It was the one movie I had memorized in my brain to the extent that I could just recite the dub to myself whenever I wanted. Plus, Chibi Moon was my favorite (do not @ me, I will fight you).

Waiting to Exhale, 1995

I don't know how I caught this one as a kid or which channel aired it, but Waiting to Exhale–starring Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon–was something I saw pieces of when I was way too young to understand any of it, and it was a joy to revisit it as an adult. I've since seen it a few times. This endlessly gif'd scene pictured above is every bit as cathartic as it looks, and the soundtrack is incredible.

The Mummy, 1999

Yeah yeah, this is an incredibly unsurprising and safe pick, but the movie is so much damn fun, and Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz have the most belligerently bisexual energy ever shared between a heterosexual pairing. I don't know how else to explain it.

Sister Act 2, 1993

I saw this one on TV a lot, and I watched it from top to bottom every single time. I don't think I've ever actually seen the first one.

Adventures in Babysitting, 1987

I found this movie incredibly delightful, and I'm pretty sure I watched it in adulthood because I was looking for this movie I'd only seen in bits and pieces on TV as a kid or something. It stars Elizabeth Shue and a very young Anthony Rapp. Plot-wise, it's very much like Lord of the Rings if Gandalf were a plucky teen girl and the hobbits were a bunch of literal children. I'm not kidding. It's also an 80s movie about a bunch of white suburbanites who have adventures in Chicago, so there are a couple cringey moments, but by the standards of its time, nothing wildly egregious. Bonus points for a surprise appearance by strapping young Vincent D'Onofrio.

Pretty in Pink, 1986, and Some Kind of Wonderful, 1987, double-feature.

I put these two together because they're the same movie, but gender-swapped. They're both written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch, so they have the same very ineffectual Reagan-era flattening of class consciousness. They're about a poor girl/boy protagonist who falls in love with a rich boy/girl. The protagonist develops a richer relationship with their beleaguered father character and develop a better understanding of themselves, kind of. John Hughes teen comedy-dramas are significant, I think, because they're some of the first blockbuster teen movies that took teens and their feelings seriously, wrote from their perspectives, and courted teens as an audience (for all kinds of historical and economic reasons between the 70s and the 80s, I'm sure, but I'm no expert). They're also more watchable than some of the other John Hughes teen movies; Sixteen Candles is basically unwatchable to me.

Porco Rosso, 1992

I told myself I could only pick one Ghibli movie for this list, and this is it. Porco Rosso might be my favorite Ghibli movie, which might seem like an odd choice for me. Like a lot of millennials who were teens when Spirited Away came out, I got really into the Ghibli catalogue in the late 2000s but had seen some Ghibli movies much earlier in my life. My first was technically Grave of the Fireflies. I was eight, and came away with the notion that if I left my little brother alone, who was five at the time, the adults around us would just let him die, so I had to watch him as carefully as I could. I became an incredibly anxious and overbearing older brother very early. Next, I'd see the Buena Vista release of Kiki's Delivery service, so I have a soft spot for all the Sydney Forest pop songs they inserted in the 90s dub of that movie. By the time I watched Porco Rosso, I'd seen most of the rest of the Ghibli catalogue, but it really stood out to me. Most of Miyazaki's protagonists are girls, but this one is a kids' feature about a middle-aged man with a pig's head. In hindsight, I think I loved it because it is one of those rare children's narratives that conflates femininity with practicality and masculinity with frivolous ostentatiousness. It's worth a watch!

Say Anything... , 1989

This is one of those teen movies where they take small, mundane problems and make them enormous, which I sort of love as a storytelling tool. John Cusack plays Lloyd, a high school underachiever who falls in love with the valedictorian, and you watch him experience true internal motivation for the first time in his young life. It's very cute! I think the thing this sort of teen movie gets really right about being a teenager is you don't really have a sense of scale for your problems at that age because all your problems are just problems you're encountering for largely the first time. Ione Skye's valedictorian character experiences a pretty devastating family issue with her father, but it's flattened into the same strata as her anxiety about flying, her first breakup, and her feelings of isolation and remove from her peers. Plus Lili Taylor is in this as Lloyd's best friend character, and she's great, just like in the next movie on this list...

Mystic Pizza, 1988

I couldn't decide which gif I wanted to use for this movie, so I just picked two. It's another slice-of-life teen comedy-drama, and it's real cozy. The performances from all the young actors are fantastic. Lili Taylor, Annabeth Gish, and Julia Roberts are great in this, plus you get to see strapping young Vincent D'Onofrio again, which is a treat. He gets to do a lot more in this one. At this point it's worth noting that 80s teen movies are obsessed with romances among young people across different social strata, and true to the Reagan era, the movies like to impress upon its audiences that hating rich people is the same as hating poor people (cue heavy eyeroll). This honestly explains a lot of things to me about today's political discourses, I think.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before, 2018

I enjoyed this Netflix movie so much that I watched it 16 or 17 times in the month after its release. It's fine, I'm fine. I don't know exactly what it was. I love rom coms. I've seen a ton of high school romance movies, and this one hit me really hard for some reason.

And that's everything I could come up with off the very top of my head. I think I hit something like 20 movies up there? Whew! That's my evening, but it was the only thing I could focus on for more than an hour at a time today.

[dykevillanelle]

a definitive list of omfd characters, from most to least fuckable

my qualifications: lesbian, impeccable taste, been rotating pirates & friends in my head for 5 solid weeks

Ed Teach - everything about him is pure distilled Fuckability and Gender. i knew i would sell my soul to him the moment he came onscreen. he is sooooo babygirl

Jim Jimenez - vico ortiz ruin me challenge. the scene where they're fighting with jackie...powerful homoeroticism, i really enjoyed it

Spanish Jackie - ive been a leslie jones stan since 2016 and the copious amounts of red velvet just made me fall deeper in love. with twenty husbands you know she's a freaque

Mary Bonnet - ms bonnet you deserve to have it laid down So right. i know you have free real estate guy but i think one of your widows support group ladies or me could do it better

Oluwande Boodhari - every time he comes onscreen i legally have to say "oluuuuuuu" while making heart eyes. 11/10 would be a very attentive lover

Roach - absolutely insane little guy, my best friend. his query of "how does he kiss?" re: the hook-headed man tells me that he's a romantic at heart.

Frenchie - everyone loves a musician who schemes and steals fancy suits during a raid. would entertain me with theories about crystals and demons. <3

Evelyn Higgens - i couldn't handle her but i wish i could

Nana - i'm not sure if it's blasphemous to include a nun on a fuckability list but if any nun fucks, it's this one.

Fang - hot topic belt boy!!!! he DOES have stunning cheekbones and i adore him.

Abshir - scammer king. he would treat me right <3

Ivan - i want more ivan in s2. his vertical stripes and black vest are so fun and flirty! 8/10

Lucius - the sideburns really don't do it for me but he'd write pretty great poetry afterward, so i'll allow it

Stede Bonnet - right smack in the middle of the list. he's extremely mid but i will confess Liberated Stede taking his boat out onto the water in 1x10 has a certain je ne sais cock

Wee John Feeney - he would be so gentle and i love his star face tattoos. interior design king, excellent hair

Black Pete - we stan a guy whose love language is gifts. im gonna need him to show some loyalty, though

Nathaniel Buttons - i think buttons doesn't know what sex is. you know the elbow sex thing in rocky horror? that's his bag

The Swede - the whole teeth-coming-out thing really disturbed me on a primal level. this is nothing against him personally, our little nordic angel

[the point of unfuckability, all others ranked only for completion's sake]

19. Alfeo de la Vaca - good taste in citrus, bad oral hygiene. 1/10 would not recommend to a friend 20. Doug - per my girlfriend: "he's not so much rancid as he is utterly sexless". i think this is true even tho canonically he treats mary right. 21. Izzy Hands - when i initially conceived of this list, izzy was at the bottom, but somehow there are characters more rancid than he is. izzyfuckers DO NOT INTERACT this racist little rat man can choke but not in a way that he would like 22. Antoinette / Gabriel - i do love kristen schaal but. yuck 23. Badminton twins - would probably find some way of accidentally killing themselves and that just sounds like a lot of hassle. 24. King George - i think it just goes to show how bad jack and geraldo are that i'm putting them below a literal british monarch. but. this man is disgusting. 25. Calico Jack - he's never thought about another person's desires in his life. probably smells like a distillery and never learns your name. fuckable only for someone with intense self-loathing 26. Geraldo - you know how people talk about getting the ick? this man is one huge ick. i thought this even before i found out fred armisten didn't treat natasha lyonne like the queen she is. i would rather fling myself from the cliffs of dover than even consider touching this man