Warning: This review contains spoilers of the movie

I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw a post about this movie and how there was Asian representation. So, I was like “Great, I’m Asian. I watch movies. I gotta support the people.” After a couple weeks, I turned on Netflix and started supporting.

The movie is a romantic comedy. I generally like romantic comedies and this is no different. Slightly different premise than the others that I’ve seen in the past, but umm definitely hits the same sort of themes. There’s a girl who falls in love with a sweet, caring guy and then they meet up together and there is a bit of a shock. Through various interactions during the Christmas season, they realize that they are a good fit for one another even though there was a lot of trickery and dishonesty. And of course it ends with a happy ending.

Overall, I thought the movie was ok. I didn’t expect too much from the movie, so I can’t really rate it poorly. I saw the representation, the main characters acted pretty well, and there were some funny moments. Harry Shum Jr’s character was so over the top with being the center of attention, that was pretty funny. Also, Jimmy Yang’s character was a solid dude – like really bad at making an initial online dating profile, but very perceptive and knowledgeable and quick on his feet and witty. I’m not sure if he was the one singing or not, but the scene where he sings “Baby it’s cold outside” as a duet with Nina Dobrev’s character and he modified the lyrics… the song was great and the singing was splendid. Not sure if the movie was trying to have a message (I know it was trying to have a message / moral – I’m being sarcastic, but I wanted to say I’m being sarcastic just in case it wasn’t clear from the words I am typing), but this made me want to watch some more holiday themed romantic comedies.

One thing I don’t really understand about the movie is how is this girl able to fly across the country to meet a guy with the guy not knowing about it – like she had his address.. he must’ve given it to her, right? Also, the photoshop of Tag was way too quick – literally instantaneous. That must’ve been saved on his phone just for this occasion.

I enjoyed Jimmy Yang in Crazy Rich Asians, I enjoyed him in this movie as well, looking forward to seeing him in other movies as well.

Spoiler Alert – This review contains content that could spoil the book for people who have not read the book

I first heard about the book People Like Her from watching a YouTube video about great books to read by the YouTuber Jenn Im. I’ve followed some of her stuff since it was recommended to me by the algorithm and for the most part, her videos are decent to watch.

This book is about a couple named Emmy and Dan and their lives while Emmy tackles being an Instagram famous. I read a summary of the book before reading it and there was a comparison to Gone Girl, which if I recall Gone Girl correctly, People Like Her does have some similar elements.

Even though the book premise is not something I would automatically be interested in, the writing was very approachable and easy to read. It was also cool to read the book with a number of different perspectives. The book jumps between Emmy’s POV, Dan’s POV, and Jill’s POV as various events occur. From an early point in the book, it was clear that Jill was planning on doing something to Emmy, but it was not clear to me what she was going to do and what she set up. Also, it took a really long time for me to figure out why Jill even was obsessed with MamaBare (Emmy’s Instagram handle) and why Jill wanted to enact revenge. When it was finally explained, I was in shock… like are you kidding me? Jill’s daughter Grace was having a tough time taking care of her baby since the baby cried a lot so Grace looked into cosleeping and whether that was a viable option for her and the baby. Apparently during a MamaBare meet up, Emmy mentioned that cosleeping had helped her when she was raising her daughter Coco. In Jill’s opinion, that meeting convinced Grace to actually cosleep with her child EVEN THOUGH Grace had researched this topic extensively and saw numerous pros and cons about cosleeping. After one cosleeping session, Grace’s baby died and her family was devastated and was not able to recover from the trauma. Obviously this is a horrible thing that happened, but like the literal first article I found about cosleeping was that NO ONE should EVER cosleep with their child, especially if they are under 6 months old – the recommendation is to room share.

Anyways, I thought that the book was an enjoyable read. I finished the book in roughly 2 weeks – half of which I think I finished on the first day I checked the book out from the library. I think that this book illustrates how scary it can be when you or a loved one gets famous or is in the public eye for an extended period of time. It’s tough to live a life under the microscope, especially when your brand and livelihood is to be and act a certain way. Also, I think that raising children is pretty dang tough and it is even tougher if they are rowdy and crying all the time. Like even the least fussy babies take a lot of time and attention.

I opened Netflix to continue watching the Hometown Cha Cha Cha kdrama when I stumbled across the Violet Evergarden movie. It reminded me of my time at work in 2019 when my coworkers and I stayed after work to watch the Violet Evergarden TV show. The show was pretty emotional and I enjoyed watching her grow and learn more about herself and the world and use her letters to bring people closer together. So, I had to watch the movie.

The movie has a few different time periods, one time period is slightly after the TV show ended and the other main time period is a generation or two after she was alive. There were a lot of familiar aspects to the movie – Violet still loved Major Gilbert very much and longed to be by his side while she continued to work at the post office as a doll / scribe. The main customer Violet had in the movie was a terminally sick young boy in the hospital. Violet was kind enough to write a few letters to his parents and his little brother even though he didn’t have much money.

There were a few scenes that highlighted how much Violet continued to grieve for Gilbert, such as visiting his mother’s grave and gazing deeply at some brooches at a festival stand. After some investigation into an undelivered letter, the President of the postal office and Violet were able to track down the Major. The Major made a new life for himself and he continued to live with the regret that he failed his people and failed her. He was so ashamed that he couldn’t bear to face her and cast her away, similar to how Violet’s customer cast his family away when they visited him in the hospital. However, through the power of the written word, Violet was able to reach Gilbert’s heart and reunite after a long time apart.

I thought the movie was good. It was very similar to the TV show and the music and animation and the dialogue were basically the same style as well. It was crazy that the Major was actually alive. I am not sure what the plot of the movie would’ve been if he wasn’t in it, but I was not expecting him to be alive and well. It made me think that this was a cop out since she could’ve moved on with her life. But I’m glad that she was able to be happy in the end. The way that she is able to understand and communicate feelings and emotions to other people when she lived without for so long is amazing.

I thought that this show was pretty funny at first. The host and the contestants didn’t take themselves too seriously and it seemed like a parody of some other dating reality tv shows. However, it got more serious and dramatic throughout the season. One odd part of the show was the eliminated contestants were banished to a section of the island for an extended period of time. The fboys had it pretty bad – hopefully that was just for tv and that they actually had decent food to eat and stuff. That must be true since there would be no way the first eliminated fboy would be able to survive just eating coconuts for a few weeks. It was also a bit annoying to watch how each of the girls knew that someone was not good for them but still kept them in the competition. This is probably similar to what happens in real life, but in so many of the solo camera shots, they were questioning if so-and-so was here for the right reasons etc. It was clear that the male and female contestants had things to work on such as their openness to others, communication, commitment, among various other aspects and it was cool to see the people recognize their faults and try to grow. Whether or not the growth stayed after the show, I’m not sure, but it made the show more watchable. I think the way the prize at the end was handled will make it a bit tough to have additional seasons. Unless they make changes, like how Too Hot to Handle made changes, I am unsure whether the fboys would be as willing to participate on the show, besides to have a chance to be at a vacation like resort and have the opportunity to date an attractive woman. But being self proclaimed fboys, they are supposedly already able to date a lot of attractive women so that probably isn’t too much of a draw. At the end of the show, when the girl chooses an fboy, the guy has the choice to take the money or to share the money. However, in the finale of the first season, the fboy who took the money couldn’t even use it the way they wanted and it had to be donated to charity. Like if the same rules apply in another season, all the fboys are going to share the money and then break up after the show – there’s literally no reason for them to spend all this time on the show and then end up with no money at all. I’m not saying that they should’ve given him the money, but the fact that the details about the compensation for this dating show was murky until the last moment was not great. Overall, I enjoyed watching the show, but it wasn’t my favorite dating reality tv show.

I recently watched Shang Chi in movie theaters. It was pretty solid. I didn’t have too many expectations going into the movie. I did read good things about it beforehand, but I felt as though some of the comments were simply because it was an American movie with Asian representation. While watching the movie, I was surprised with the amount of Mandarin Chinese they were using. Like I definitely expected the movie to be completely in English. I was able to understand some of the Chinese which was cool and obviously the subtitles were there for assistance as well. There were a bunch of fight scenes in the movie so that was great. Some of them had a lot of CGI, and others had a lot of choreographed sequences. I enjoyed them all. I thought that the movie felt a bit rushed. Like it could have let the scenes breathe a bit more. I read some comments about the movie saying that there wasn’t a love interest, but I would say that there was a strong friendship. Also, in the first part of the movie, Sean was the one who told Katy’s grandmother that he was just friends with her, so if the character wanted to be a relationship, then he would’ve done something different there. There was definitely a strong sense of family and community with this movie. Those are definitely themes that are prevalent in Chinese culture so it makes sense why it appeared here as well. The little comedic moments were a nice addition to the movie. I don’t think these moments were necessary since the movie wasn’t that serious, but it seems to match the characters’ personalities.

I don’t have a great memory so I am not sure where this movie would rank in terms of Marvel movies, but I don’t think it was the best Marvel movie that I’ve seen. I would say it was in the middle. I definitely think Deadpool, Black Panther, Spiderverse, and some of the Avengers movies were better. But, I’m glad I watched the movie and I’m looking forward to seeing more of these characters in the future.

Before watching the movie, I read some of the online reviews. There was a few positive reviews, but most of them were negative. As a result, I tried to have an open mind and no expectations when watching the movie. I thought the movie was perfectly fine. There was a relatively clear story line and a happy ending at the end. The action and visual effects made sense and I was left with a pleasant feeling at the end. I thought the movie flew by – I saw that the movie was supposed to be about 2 hours long, but I didn’t even notice. I couldn’t relate to the characters very much, but it was cool seeing some of the familiar movies and characters spread throughout the Serververse. It was a bit odd how upset Al G. Rhythm got when people insulted his ideas. Like shit man, if you were a good algorithm, then there would a feedback loop to improve the algorithm. Also, it didn’t really make sense why he was so lonely and so desperate for Lebron James to be the star – like there are so many Warner Bros characters he could interact with and there are so many really talented athletes, celebrities, and people in general to team up with. But I guess, why not? The concept of taking someone’s physical body and transporting them into the virtual world was done well like phone camera scanning.. nice. I hadn’t seen that before or if I had I don’t remember. Also, the stuff Dom had to learn how to do in order to create his game was a bit wild. Like damn, this guy is putting so much time into this and Lebron had no idea and didn’t care for months if not years? Geez, how’d he build such a large empire in the movie and in real life and not know about video games and programming. Silicon Valley is just a few hours away from LA. Oh well. Solid movie, skewing towards a younger audience, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

I thought that this show was great. I didn’t watch season 1, but season 2 had exactly what I was hoping for – attractive people, drama, and character development. One issue I had with Love Island was that there was no real goal of the show. Like the people were just there on an island sitting around. But for this, they were actually there for a reason and they were forced by Lana to build more genuine relationships. I’m not sure if I thought it was appropriate for them to kick people off who didn’t have anyone to pair up with, but it made sense in terms of a TV show. Like the people who got kicked off are still going to have mainly physical relationships – the show is supposed to help people curb that. Anyways, I do think that some of the stuff is a bit outrageous, like are they really that horny that they would have sex in the same room as all the other members? I guess perhaps that is why they were chosen for the show and why I am not chosen for the show. Additionally, the workshops were pretty cool. It made me feel like I was learning how to form better relationships while watching. I think this show is better than Love Island.