April 2025 Reviews
hi!
But First…
Guys I forgot to tell you all about THE TIME I GOT TO MEET A BELUGA. Okay okay okay hold up.
As a belated birthday excursion, my friend Hilary and I went to the Shedd Aquarium and met some beluga whales! We’ve previously done their penguin and otter encounters, which were excellent, and this year we took the plunge (literally!) and cavorted with some belugas. It is absolutely worth the price tag, as you get to hang out for probably around 30-45 minutes or so in a tank with several belugas. You get to feed them — they don’t have gag reflexes, so you just yeet the fish down their throats — and pet them, including their wobbly little jelly heads and their bellies AND their tongues. Because these guys LOVE getting tongue pats, and I don’t know who the first person was who was like “know what I’m gonna do? stick my hand in this thing’s mouth and hope for the best” but they made some beluga somewhere really happy. You obviously also get to learn a lot about belugas while you’re doing all the friendly patting, including learning how all of the activities we’re doing also help train the belugas for handling in case of medical exams, in addition to providing enrichment and mental stimulation to them. At the end, you get to high five the beluga, can choose between getting a headbump or a kiss (me, pictured below), and then get some level of splashed depending on how soggy and fishy smelling you want to be at the end of the day. Fun fact, I kept doing the motions for the high five wrong and if it is possible for a beluga to get huffy and frustrated at a big stupid human, this one absolutely did. I think that whale trained me instead of the other way around.
It was a totally perfect experience and I could not stop smiling the whole time. The belugas are so huge but not scary at all and are really just curious about you and eager to show off. Highly recommended, would beluga again.
Books
The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead—Follows a group of boys, two in particular, at a brutal reform school in Florida. Possibly a rare case of "if I'd read this before I saw the movie, I would have given it five stars". The movie is just so inventive in the way it uses perspective/point of view, and the twist of this book that ends up being so stunning loses some of its impact (for me) once you know it's coming. Still, though. This is an excellent book - harrowing, sobering, horrifying, with a glimmer of hope for something better - and far more straightforward than Whitehead's The Underground Railroad. Despite the heavy subject matter, it is a fairly quick read once you get into it. Had I not already known how it ended, I most likely would have read this over the course of a weekend rather than in bits and pieces over time.
Drive Me Crazy, Carly Robyn—Sportswriter/podcaster Ella gets a job co-writing the biography of F1 bad boy Blake. Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers ensues. I picked this up on a whim, fully anticipating not actually enjoying it, but overall it was readable, engaging, and only a little eye-roll-inducing. Ella, Blake, and the cast of supporting characters are funny, even if the writing sometimes veers a little more into "I think this is how cool people talk" than I enjoy. The conflict between them (not quite a third act break up but close) is a conflict that makes sense instead of just being drama manufactured for the sake of drama. I would check out the others in the series for when I need a low stakes romance to page through.
The Mars House, Natasha Pulley—Speculative fiction/sci-fi set on a Mars colony where tensions between Earth-born (January, a ballet dancer and refugee from a climate-destroyed Earth) and Mars-born/adapted abound (Gale, a wealthy, influential politician). Just your classic fake-marriage-for-political-reasons story. I will admit that if this book was written by anyone else, I would probably be more critical of it. But Pulley has such a gentle, whimsical way of writing about hard things, and creates such compelling characters and situations, that I am more forgiving than I usually would be. That said, Pulley is a writer who desperately wants to be taking on issues of race and gender and injustice across time and history but who doesn’t always have the chops or the nuance to get it right, and The Mars House, with its Mars residents who have a culture highly influenced by China and who eschew physical gender characteristics and who are in a constant struggle with how Earth-born people assimilate (or don’t), approaches some of these things with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. If I think too critically about this, I start to have several questions about what, exactly, Pulley is trying to say.
Somebody Needs to Do Something About That Monster!, Doug Cenko—The first of two picture books I read while standing around in a bookstore, repeatedly walking the book over to my friend so I could make her look at it with me. Large blue creature named Merv sits outside of a village, whose residents all implore the universe to do something about that monster. Merv, not realizing that he is the titular monster, sets out to try to find a way to help the villagers. The message of the book is a combination of "be careful what you wish for" and "people have hidden gifts" with a dash of "you're important too!" but the ending didn't leave me convinced that anyone had really learned a lesson about treating Merv better and accepting him. The illustrations are so great, though, and if there isn’t a Merv plushie for sale yet, there really should be.
Viking in Love, Doug Cenko—Stig the Viking loves many things but he does not love the sea. When he meets Ingrid, he immediately falls in love, but has to conquer his fears to find her again. I loved this so much! The illustrations are so great and whimsical, and it feels like every page is full of little details to discover. I don't feel like romance is a common kid's book topic but the way this is presented is so charming that I think even the most "boys/girls are yucky" reader will be entertained. There are some bits with kittens — Stig loves adorable kittens — that had me absolutely laughing out loud.
The Future of Another Timeline, Annalee Newitz—1990s punk teen navigates a dysfunctional family and challenging friendships; 2022 adult woman navigates time travel and trying to change the course of history. Somehow even more topical today than when it was published in 2019. It is hard to call this a delightful read because it is so frequently very dark, but I plowed through this just the same. The science of it all didn't always work for me - it all being a little inscrutable is handwaved away by being like "well no one here super understands this either", which is fine but also a little unsatisfying to me, a person who likes to know how things work - but trying to untangle what's happening across various different timelines was engrossing. Darkly violent, a bit confusing in the messaging, a love letter to the 1990s California punk scene. I think the villains-as-people (rather than villain-as-societal-concept) could have been a bit better fleshed out, and the ending was abrupt, but I am looking forward to revisiting this in the future to do a re-read and see what I can pick up on once I already know how the whole story goes. Features a fictional riot grrl band called Grape Ape, which helpfully got their very own in-universe music video when the book was published.
Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey—Esther runs away from home and joins the Librarians, who travel the land distributing Approved Materials to people. Dystopian queer western, where the Morally Upstanding Librarians are more than they seem. I can't necessarily criticize a novella for not giving me everything I wanted, because it's a novella, there's only so many pages to use to flesh out our characters and situations and whatnot. I was okay with the thin world-building here — there's enough to get an idea of what the world is like, enough to let you draw your own conclusions, and enough to be expanded on if the author ever decides to revisit this world. I had a hard time with the characters, though, who we only barely get to know. Esther is frustratingly idiotic, and although her sheltered nature makes it easy to understand why she's so naive, that doesn't make it easier to read. The insta-crush she develops felt highly unrealistic, particularly given the timeline of events that led Esther to join the Librarians. I rolled my eyes at a lot of the very stupid decisions she made, and often couldn't figure out if she was supposed to be a teenager, or older, given her behavior. (Really, most of the characters were of an indeterminate age; the other Librarians read as much older than Esther, though.) The writing itself is strong and I’m always a sucker for any Western-inspired world. I have a feeling I'd really vibe with the author's longer works.
The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley—The Brits discover time travel and bring back a few people from the past who were otherwise on the brink of certain death. Our unnamed narrator is assigned as what is essentially a minder/cultural translator for Graham Gore, most recently of the doomed Franklin Expedition, 1847. As a Polar Disaster Aficionado, as well as a lover of sci fi and weird romances and etc. etc., this book felt practically made for me. I genuinely enjoyed this while simultaneously wanting more from it. It's something that I would enjoy seeing as, say, a 6-episode TV series, so we could linger on the romance AND the time travel AND the history AND the social/cultural/political themes AND the spy/action aspect and and and… I think the book's biggest fault is that it tries to do too many things, and then ends up leaving chunks of readers unsatisfied. If you're there for the romance, you're probably not as into the other aspects. If you're there for the polar explorer out of his time aspect, you want to see more of that. By trying to mash all these things together, with some very serious themes of race/culture/colonialism/etc., with a last third that devolves into more of a thriller, sort of everything gets short shrift. Kaliane Bradley has an exquisite way with words, though, which gets more flower-y and more esoteric the deeper our narrator falls headfirst into having feelings. Her way of writing a character who is very matter of fact yet naive yet also hopelessly flower-y was really compelling, and I absolutely love her fictionalized out-of-time Graham Gore, he was so charming that I loved every moment we spent with him. I do think the end came about rather abruptly, and a lot of the book is just basically handwaved vibes. And that's okay! I love vibes!
Book links go to an affiliate page on Bookshop.org, where I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase.
Movies
Vengeance (2022)—NYC journalist and douchebag finds himself in fish-out-of-water territory after a deceased former hookup’s family thinks they were closer than they really were. This movie, written and directed by BJ Novak (The Office), wants you to think it's smarter than it really is. The story arc is mostly predictable - "big city elite" goes to Texas and sets out to make a podcast expose that's supposed to be "about America" but which is actually going to wind up being exploitative of the small town folks he meets, has his stereotypes confirmed, then realizes that maybe he's wrong, etc. etc. There are a couple of of funny moments, and Boyd Holbrook puts in a solidly entertaining performance as the deceased woman’s brother, but mostly everything is more pretentious than it needed to be.
The Amateur (2025)—CIA computer guy’s wife is murdered and he decides to take matters into his own hands. Would have been more enjoyable had the trailers not given away all of the major plot points. It still would have been predictable but at least some of the splashiest moments would have come as surprises. The movie was Just Average, but in a world where studios want to lean on pre-existing franchises, I will never say no to a slick looking Just Average movie that’s all original characters.
The Ballad of Narayama (1958)—Classic Japanese film about a remote village that enforces a policy of leaving elderly family members atop a mountain to live out their final time on earth. Main character Orin is ready for her mountaintop journey and embraces her fate, while others around her fight, scheme, and try to avoid their responsibilities. Presented in a kabuki style, with lengthy sung interludes to tell the story. The sets are fascinating; the use of painted backdrops, panning the camera from one set to another to indicate a new location, and different colored lighting makes this feel more like watching a play rather than a film. Wildly depressing but really embodies Japanese cultural values. (The whole “leave your elders to die” thing is folklore more than anything else, with no strong evidence to suggest that it was a regularly followed practice.)
Kraven the Hunter (2024)—The most disappointing part of this movie is that somewhere in there is the bones of a story that could have been made interesting, and a character in Kraven who could be a compelling anti-hero. And instead we got whatever the hell this is. I do not know the first thing about scriptwriting and even I came out of this with a running list in my head of things I would have done to make this make more sense. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is really hot, though, so, like, you know, it’s not a total loss.
Sinners (2025)—Jim Crow-era Mississippi. The blues. Vampires. Perfection. Going to be really hard not to put this on my top movies of the year list once January rolls around. It it messy? Yeah. Were the vampires really scary? No. Was this movie layered and nuanced and authentic and more riveting than anything else I’ve seen this year? Absolutely yes. I cannot wait to watch it again. Recommended Reading: Sinners Movie Syllabus, with an extensive list of scholarly and mainstream resources to educate you on the historical context of the movie.
A Nice Indian Boy (2025)—Naveen navigates his family’s expectations, their acceptance, and his own acceptance of himself, when he finally brings a boyfriend home to meet the family. Despite being a regular romance novel reader, I am lukewarm at best on romcoms, which so frequently miss the mark for me that I don't often even bother seeing them. This was so much better than I could have even dreamed, though - I laughed a ton, I cried a little, and I guess maybe love is real or something like that. This works well even if you don't have any ties to Indian culture, the themes of love and wanting to belong are universal. I'm so glad I decided to see this.
The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025)—Reclusive music fan invites both halves of a broken-up music duo to his isolated island for a special performance. This movie had a lot of chances to make the wrong decisions and, surprisingly enough, it chose wisely nearly all of the time. It would have been easy to punch down, or to get too saccharine, or to take the easy way out in terms of resolving the characters' emotional conflict. Instead we've got a film about what it means to let go of the past, to honor where you came from and who you got there with but still allowing yourself to transform into something new. Sweetly funny, awkward in a wholesome way.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)—Down on his luck writer gets sucked into weird situationship with fading star. Not sure how I’d never seen this one before but I can’t believe I was missing out for so long. A classic for a reason, and despite the subject matter (silent film star who failed to make the transition to talking movies) being very Of Its Time, everything about the story is so timeless. Another movie that has had such an influence on media and on popular culture, it’s great to be able to watch it and finally have a point of reference for it. Really glad I spent the time with this one.
Swiss Army Man (2016)—Guy stranded on deserted island gives up hope of rescue until a corpse washes ashore that he, uh, befriends. This is simultaneously an outrageously juvenile movie — fart jokes make up a significant potion of the run time — and a very poignant, melancholy movie, which is a pretty uncommon achievement. Push past the middle school boy-style humor and you’ll find a story about allowing yourself to be seen for who you really are.
What Else?
The 2025 Live Music Playlist has been updated with the acts that I saw live in April: Cursive (The Salt Shed), Bright Eyes (The Salt Shed), Hana Stretton (Thalia Hall), Mount Eerie (Thalia Hall), Bill Callahan (Old Town School of Folk Music), and the cast of Swept Away (Bowery Ballroom, NYC).
I did take a quick trip to NYC at the end of the month, primarily to see the Swept Away concert, but of course made time for some theatre, too.
Cabaret: I didn’t really have any interest in this when the West End-to-Broadway transfer was announced (I did not like the little I had seen of Eddie Redmayne in the role of Emcee), I had mild interest when Adam Lambert joined the cast as a replacement, but I am a sucker for Orville Peck (fun trivia fact: Orville Peck at Thalia Hall was my first concert “back” after music venues started doing shows again after COVID restrictions) so I decided to give it a chance, and holy shit was I blown away. Peck and Eve Noblezada (Sally) were both incredible. Eve I’ve seen before in Hadestown so I already knew what she could bring to the show, but I really thought that Peck was just stunt casting. Yeah, sure, let’s get the weirdo gay masked country singer in the show, get some butts in seats, etc. What I did not know is that Peck has a background in professional dance and theater. He is absolutely magnetic as the Emcee, and channels a level of menace that is downright chilling as the show reaches its final conclusion. The production itself is so immersive - get there early and spend some time watching the pre-show performance by a handful of dancers and musicians while you’re waiting to get a drink from the bar (served to you in an actual glass). I think some of the minimalism of the production (bare stage, few props) works against it in terms of making the viewer sometimes having to interpret what’s going on. But the performances are so strong that it makes up for anywhere the staging struggles. I’m looking forward to finding myself back in NYC again before the cast turns over (late July) to see how they’ve all settled into their roles. (August Wilson Theatre, open run, Peck and Noblezada are in their roles through July 20)
Pirates! The Penzance Musical: I went to see this entirely based on how entertained I was by this review. The revival of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic relocates the story to New Orleans and reenvisions the music to have a distinctly jazzy flair. Purists will be disappointed, but if the only songs you know of the original are "I am the very model of a modern Major-General" and "With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal" (or the Animaniacs parodies of same) you’ll be just fine. Ramin Karimloo, Jinkx Monsoon, and David Hyde Pierce are all delightful in their starring roles. Karimloo, who I’ve only ever seen in serious roles before, does a hilarious job as the Pirate King, with comedic timing that would make you think that he’s been playing the funny guy his whole career. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever seen, but it was fun and fluffy and in this current stage of history sometimes you just need something dumb and brightly colored to watch for a couple of hours. No, not much happens during the show. Yes, it is exceptionally silly sometimes. Who cares. (Todd Haimes Theatre, through July 27)
Dungeons and Dragons: The Twenty Sided Tavern: Yes, it’s live-action D&D. Yes, it’s the hardest I have laughed in ages. I saw this production over the summer and enjoyed it so much that I had to go again while I was in town. The players are drawing from a set of pre-existing characters, and the quests are repeated, but the very nature of D&D means that you could see this production every night and get something different every time. Players are still rolling dice, after all, and there’s an interactive element, too, with the audience being able to vote on different aspects of the story (as well as suggest names for NPCs, which always goes hilariously awry). The show is accessible even if you don’t play D&D, and the ability of everyone on stage to think on their feet and react to what’s happening in the game is just unparalleled. The show closes this week, but a version of it will be going on tour (Washington DC and Charlotte, NC have already been announced) so if you’re at all interested in this kind of nerd content, make sure to go when they roll through your town. (Stage 42, through May 11)
What’s Next?
I’ve got some more theatre on tap for May, including Hadestown and Titaníque both in Chicago. The last Mission: Impossible movie comes out, and although I’ve already seen some mediocre reviews, I will still be dutifully heading to my local IMAX to watch Tom Cruise do very stupid things. And 28 Days Later is getting a re-release, so I’m excited to catch that in theaters to refresh myself on it before the newest one comes out.
Other than that, a friend and I are taking a trip to a little lakeside house in Wisconsin for the holiday, so I’m looking forward to crushing some silly romance books and looking at the water for a few days.
Anyway, what are you all up to?
Follow me on Letterboxd, Goodreads, Storygraph, Bluesky. Make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter so you get my monthly rambles in your inbox. Because everyone needs another email.
To support me with either a one-time gift or a monthly membership (the higher levels of which will allow you to tell me what you’d like to see me read/watch), visit my ko-fi page.