Shit, Actually
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4.4 • 14 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
**Your Favorite Movies, Re-Watched**
New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle's alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years with an eye toward the big questions of our time: Is Twilight the horniest movie in history? Why do the zebras in The Lion King trust Mufasa-WHO IS A LION-to look out for their best interests? Why did anyone bother making any more movies after The Fugitive achieved perfection? And, my god, why don't any of the women in Love, Actually ever f*****g talk?!?!
From Forrest Gump, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and Bad Boys II, to Face/Off, Top Gun, and The Notebook, Lindy combines her razor-sharp wit and trademark humor with a genuine adoration for nostalgic trash to shed new critical light on some of our defining cultural touchstones-the stories we've long been telling ourselves about who we are. At once outrageously funny and piercingly incisive, Shit, Actually reminds us to pause and ask, "How does this movie hold up?", all while teaching us how to laugh at the things we love without ever letting them or ourselves off the hook.
Shit, Actually is a love letter and a break-up note all in one: to the films that shaped us and the ones that ruined us. More often than not, Lindy finds, they're one and the same.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Remember that scene from American Pie where a high-school girl is broadcast naked on the internet without her consent and somehow it’s supposed to be…funny? Have you noticed that there are basically no women characters in The Fugitive at all? With this witty essay collection, Lindy West has a fun time rewatching movie “classics” she loved growing up—and skewering the embarrassingly unwoke elements that were once accepted unthinkingly by society. West’s deadpan narration adds extra fire to her searing hot takes, and we loved being able to skip around and listen to her takedowns of our favorite (or least favorite) movies. But it’s even more fun to listen to her essays in order, since just like an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, West’s running jokes get funnier and funnier as she riffs on them. (We agree with her that every movie would be 100% better, or at least weirder, if it had Nicolas Cage in it.) Unabashedly silly but always perfectly on point, Shit, Actually is destined to age a whole lot better than the movies it covers.
