Watched in 2023 #8: The Summer I Turned Pretty, White, Red and Royal Blue and more

This year is almost over and I really need to catch up with my reviews of all the movies and tv shows I watched in 2023. Hopefully, I’ll manage to do it. For now, here are my thoughts on things I’ve watched lately, some of which surprisingly I did not end up enjoying.

Lost in Translation (2.5 stars): I had never watched this before and I had high expectations, but unfortunately, I didn’t end up enjoying this that much. Maybe because I dislike the main characters, so while I understand that it was a movie about loneliness and isolation, I couldn’t sympathize with two rich people wasting a trip to Japan moping around and kind of cheating on their partners. But mainly, I didn’t enjoy this because I hated the racist depiction of Japan and Japanese people, who were always the butt of the joke.

My Life as a Zucchini (4.5 stars): This made me cry so much. It’s a very emotional movie that deals with very heavy topics. It’s about kids in an orphanage who have gone through difficult situations and despite their pain and trauma are there for each other and become a family. It’s a thought-provoking, heavy movie with beautiful moments of tenderness and compassion.

Marie Antoinette (4 stars): I haven’t watched this in years and it’s still good. It’s fun and entertaining. The music, the pastel colors, the costumes, and the performances are all captivating. But my favorite things about it is that it does a good job of humanizing Marie Antoinette but also portraying her as a complex character, showing her loneliness, her naivete, her isolation, the fact that she was out of touch with the reality of the French people, that she was spoiled, self-absorbed and materialistic. Overall, I think this is well worth a watch and a re-watch as well.

Puppy Love (4 stars): This was surprisingly good. Lucy Hale and Grant Gustin have a lot of chemistry and it’s a solid romance movie. It had its funny moments, it was sweet and entertaining, and the dogs were adorable. I really appreciated that they included a representation of social anxiety and how much it can affect a person’s life, I think they did a really good job with that aspect.

Maybe I Do (2 stars): The cast of this movie is so impressive but this movie did not deserve it. It is unrealistic and boring, the writing in general but the jokes in particular are terrible, and it wasn’t romantic or sweet at all.

White, Red, and Royal Blue (3.5 stars): I had read and loved the book, so I don’t know why but I had a hard time suspending my disbelief about most things that happened in the movie even when they also happened in the book. Anyway, the implausibility of it all kept taking me out of the movie. Besides that, the main characters had good chemistry and they were cute together, the movie was entertaining, it had its funny moments, and there were some good side characters. Was it cringy? yes. Was it still fun and made me giggle? also yes

Make Me Believe (2.5 stars): I think this is the first Turkish movie I have ever watched and it was entertaining enough if you like to watch two hot people in a beautiful setting going from enemies to lovers. Also, there were cute grandmothers. Nonetheless, not a lot happens in terms of plot, the entire movie is predictable, I wanted more out of the romance because it’s mostly glances and very little communication, and the ending felt rushed.

The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 1 and Season 2 (4 stars): I resisted as much as I could to watch this, but the Taylor and Steven edits on TikTok finally made me cave. This is actually really engaging, I was way too invested in the lives of teenagers, I was rooting for them but they also frustrated me, annoyed me, and confused me. Some of their choices make absolutely no sense. Most of the writing and performances were actually really good, and the soundtrack for every episode was fantastic.

Not Others (3.5 stars): This kdrama is about a complex mother/ daughter relationship, which is something I really enjoyed about it. It has a really good main romance between the daughter and her co-worker, it’s a slow burn, filled with tension, and kind of a dislike to like romance at least from the co-worker’s side. I definitely wanted more scenes between them. The storyline that revolved around her job as a cop is entertaining and the people she worked with were good side characters. The mother was a bit frustrating, especially in the way she put her daughter in a really awkward position when it came to her “father”. I didn’t love the romance between the parents, mainly because of the mom, but I didn’t hate it either.

Uncanny Counter Season 2 (3 stars): Unfortunately I found this season to be a bit boring, there were way too many fight scenes, the main storyline got repetitive at some points, and I really could not understand what the new character that was added to the team brought to the show, he was pretty useless and a bit annoying to me. Nonetheless, I did like the new villains and the dilemma that the protagonists were facing by having to fight someone they cared about. The whole “follow the rules vs do the right” conflict was well handled. I also enjoyed having the original cast back and I think each one individually had a powerful and emotional storyline this season.

What movies or tv shows have you loved lately? Have you watched any movie or tv show that really disappointed you in 2023?

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