Movies: Oculus

Mpepper/ May 2, 2021/ Reviews

This movie is from 2013, and I vaguely remembering hearing the title, but it never really made it onto my radar. I probably thought it was sci-fi, which isn’t my thing. (I don’t hate sci-fi, but I don’t make any special effort to ingest it, either.) As it turns out, however, this is actually a psychological horror movie, and I

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Television: Merlin (Seasons 1 & 2)

Mpepper/ April 10, 2021/ Reviews

Very late to this party, but my daughter requested to watch this series. She’d seen an episode of it at a friend’s house once, had immediately pinpointed Merlin and Arthur as a couple, and had been curious ever since. So we started watching it as part of our regular girl time. For those unfamiliar: Merlin is a BBC television series

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Television: Bridgerton 1-4

Mpepper/ February 16, 2021/ Reviews

So I’m halfway through this series or season or whatever (I feel like the usual ways to describe television no longer have meaning) when I realize this is the book—that is, the first book in this series—I was “warned” about from various sources. Okay, that was really convoluted, so let me try again. I didn’t realize “Bridgerton” was the name

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Books: Menfreya in the Morning by Victoria Holt

Mpepper/ January 22, 2021/ Reviews

I first started reading Victoria Holt books as a pre-teen. I wasn’t allowed to read anything with explicit sex, so I read a lot of historical romances of the chaste type. Regency romances were a favorite, as were gothic novels by the likes of du Maurier and Holt. Even if sex was present, it was off the page, and I

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Television: WandaVision

Mpepper/ January 16, 2021/ Reviews

Umm… okay. So that was fun. I guess? Only the first two episodes of WandaVision are out, and it’s clear that there is more going on than at first meets the eye. Which is a good thing, since I think—fun as this is—it would tire out kind of quickly. For those not in the know, WandaVision is Disney+’s latest Marvel

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Books: Recent Reads

Mpepper/ January 13, 2021/ Reviews

I’ve been meaning to make a YouTube video for this, and I might still do that, but for now it’s faster to just write about the handful of books I’ve read recently. Meghan and Harry: The Real Story Overall, I think Lady Colin Campbell is trying to be fair. She mentions numerous times how she wanted to Meghan to succeed,

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Movies: Soul

Mpepper/ December 29, 2020/ Reviews

Let me start with the disclaimer that I’m not actually much of a Pixar fan. They’ve made some good movies, but most of their work I’m either indifferent to, and a few of their films I actively dislike. I do think their overall visual quality is generally amazing, but I often can’t connect to their stories. I don’t know why.

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Books: Carry On and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

Mpepper/ December 23, 2020/ Reviews

It probably helps to start with Fangirl. Which I read, oh, two or three years ago? It’s the only other book by Rowell I’ve read, and I only thought it was okay. But I know I’m not the only person to think the best parts of that book were the faux fan fiction pieces the main character was writing. For

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Movies: Tenet

Mpepper/ December 22, 2020/ Reviews

This movie was so boring. It’s a movie so intent on being clever (or thinking it’s being clever, anyway), that it has exactly nothing to offer to make the audience care about any of it. By which I mean, the characters are flat and trite, and we have zero reasons to give a f*** about any of them. “Leaden” is

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Book Review Quickies

Mpepper/ November 8, 2020/ Reviews

If you’d rather see/hear me talk about the books I’ve read lately, check my YouTube channel for all the videos. (Like, subscribe, click the bell, share, etc.) But if you’d rather read, here are the quick versions of my reviews. The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel This is the final tome in the three-part historical fiction series about

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