Moxie

My Favourite Films of 2021

Another odd year in terms of film releases. In the UK cinemas were shut until around May and what makes up my top ten of the year are a combination of streaming releases, films I saw at film festivals, and ones that were released in the cinema. These are in no particular order but they are all films that I thoroughly enjoyed for various reasons – some made me happy, some made me sad, and some made me feel both happy and sad during their runtime.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
I did not know what to expect going into Shang-Chi but I had a total blast with it – in fact, it’s the only film I saw more than once in the cinema and I rewatched it at home over Christmas and enjoyed it even more. The characters and their relationships stay at the heart of everything, even when things get a bit CGI-heavy in the final act.

Moxie
I read and loved the book years ago and thought this was a great adaptation. The young cast were great and though the feminist themes are as heavy as a sledgehammer I thought managed to cover intersectional feminism in a fun but understandable way for teens.

Spider-Man: No Way Home
This was so full of nostalgia and I absolutely loved it. Still haven’t managed to see No Way Home again but I really want to as that was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the cinemas in ages.

Everything in the End
An end of the world film full of melancholy and human connection and it just worked so well. it especially resonated now after what I’ve experienced during a pandemic.

F9
Was the latest Fast and Furious film the most over the top and ridiculous yet? Yes. Did I enjoy every second of it? Also, yes. I love this franchise and the latest instalment was everything I loved about it cranked up to 11. The villain was lacking a bit but I loved Han coming back and his pseudo-daughter and how Mia returned too.

Boss Level
I’ll watch pretty much anything Frank Grillo is in and Boss Level was great. It’s fun, innovative, interesting and just pure entertaining. I enjoyed how you learn the rules of this world pretty quick but there’s still things for you to figure out.

Beyto
I absolutely fell in love with this film and its three main characters. It’s about Beyto, the only son of a Turkish migrant family who falls in love with his swimming coach Mike. When his parents find out they plan to marry him to his childhood best friend Seher in order to solve the perceived problem. This unlikely love triangle is so sad but hopeful at the same time and I loved all three of them and it’s one of those films that when it ended, I’d love to see what the three of them are up to in a few years’ time.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye
This isn’t released till February here in the UK but I got to see it at a film festival and had such a great time with it. I didn’t know the people and events it was based on but I loved both Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield’s performances.

Tick, Tick… Boom!
Andrew Garfield really had a great year. I have not seen RENT (movie or stag version) nor is my musical theatre knowledge that great so I knew next to nothing about Jonathan Larson before watching Tick, Tick… Boom! Turns out I loved the songs and the story and how relatable it was. It’s funny and sad but hopeful and yeah, Andrew Garfield was fantastic and has a wonderful voice.

The Rescue
One of the last films I watched in 2021 and it was a great choice to round out the year. incredibly gripping and interesting documentary about how the boys football team was rescued from the caves in Thailand. The reconstructions were so well done and how it showed how the help came from the most unexpected places shows how people are good actually.

What were some of your favourite films you saw last year?

REVIEW: Moxie (2021)

Fed up with the sexist and toxic status quo at her high school, a shy Vivian (Hadley Robinson) finds inspiration from her mother’s rebellious past and anonymously publishes a zine that sparks a school-wide, coming-of-rage revolution.

I read and reviewed Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu way back in 2017 and I equally had high hopes for the film and was apprehensive as I liked the book so much. I’m very pleased to say that I enjoyed the film and I think it’s generally one of the best book to movie adaptations I’ve seen in a long time.

Moxie is a coming age story that focuses on girls finding their voices and learning to stand up for themselves, rather than being all about a formative love interest. While Vivian is the one to almost unwittingly start this feminist revolution in her school, she is far from the only girl who has something to say. With the arrival of the zine Vivian finds herself with a whole new group of friends, all girls who are tired of the status quo and they each bring ideas of what they could do next to make their voices heard.

Vivian is a great character. She’s the kind of girl who’d always been quiet and just kept her head down but once she started paying attention, she quickly gets frustrated by how girls are treated at her school. Vivian is inspired by Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Pena) who’s not afraid to stand up for herself when popular jock Mitchell (Patrick Schwarzenegger) will not stop harassing her and by the double standards when Kaitlynn (Sabrina Haskett) is told her wearing a tank top is against the school dress code, but the boy sat next to her wearing practically the same thing isn’t. Vivian is fallible, she makes mistakes as her rage at what’s going on often targets the wrong people and she’s learning about what being a feminist means and inclusivity as she goes. Vivian’s shocked when her best friend Claudia (Lauren Tsai) points out the privilege she has compared to her as the child of immigrants who have sacrificed a lot for her. Slowly Vivian learns while there are universal challenges facing women, there are ones she’d have no knowledge or experience of due to her upbringing.

Moxie is very aware of what’s been happening in the real world. You hear snippets of new stories about the #MeToo movement in the background and the English teacher (Ike Barinholtz) finds it difficult to say or do the right thing as a man and an authority figure when the girls start standing up for themselves and asking “difficult” questions. While that scene is used for comedic effect, it shows how awkward and difficult some find talking about these things because they have, unfortunately, been the norm for so long.

Moxie is a film with so much heart. It might stumble a bit in the third act, but then again so does Vivian, and it’s perhaps not as revolutionary for an older audience but for young people it’s a film that can prompt discussions and encourage them to fight for what they believe in. Also, so much of this film is about girls supporting girls and the different relationships between friends, and it’s a breath of fresh air to see this quite diverse group of friends supporting each other. Moxie is fun, funny and inspiring and to top it off it has a killer soundtrack. 5/5.

TOP 5 WEDNESDAY: Book List for a Class on Feminism

Top 5 Wednesday is a great feature hosted by ThoughtsonTomes. To find out more about Top 5 Wednesday and the upcoming topics, check out its Goodreads page. This week in honour of summer coming to an end and it soon being the start of the new school year, we can create our own reading list for a topic of our choice. I chose feminism as I think both fiction and non-fiction are a great way to get people talking about feminism and see how it can affect different people.

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Moxie is all about a girl finding her voice and finding a sense of unity with the girls in her school, crossing the usual cliques, and learning to stand up for what she believes in.

Who Runs the World? by Virginia Bergin
Since reading Who Runs the World? I’ve thought about it fair bit and would give it a lower rating than I did when I read it, but I think it would be a good book to show the “extremes” of feminism and how if there’s no men, it probably wouldn’t be a utopia.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Besides being a great book, The Hate U Give would be a great book to look at the intersectionality of feminism and racism.

 

Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit
Got to have some non-fiction in a class on feminism. This is a short collection of essays and one of them is the origin of the term “mansplaining” so that would be an interesting thing to discuss.

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed
The three main girls are all different, Rosina is a Mexican-American lesbian, Grace is fat, and Erin has Asperger’s, but they come together to try and change things as another girl was run out of town for accusing the popular guys at school of gang rape.

I think all these books would prompt good discussions about feminism. They offer different takes on feminism and a lot of them have strong, complex female characters who are trying to find their place in the world but are trying to make things a little bit better at the same time.

What books would you choose if you were running a class of feminism? I’m sure there are many great books I’ve forgotten.

TOP TEN TUESDAY: Top Ten Favourite Books of 2017

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week. It’s coming up to that time of year where we reflect on what we’ve read and decide which books have been our favourites. Now there is a couple of weeks left of 2017 so something could sneak in here but here’s how it stands at the moment.

In no particular order, here are my ten favourite books of 2017 – links go to my review.

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
This book is a great feminist read. I sped though this book because I related to the characters so much and as I read I’d get this pain in my chest because it felt so real and was equal parts inspiring and frustrating.

Frangipani by Celestine Hitiura Vaite
This book surprised me by how much I loved it. It’s a family drama with a compelling mother/daughter relationship at its heart and it’s such a nice read. I know “nice” isn’t really seen as a positive word but that’s what it is, there’s no major drama or sudden plot twists, it’s just a comforting read.

Power Man and Iron Fist Vol. 1: The Boys are Back in Town by David Walker, Sanford Greene and Flaviano
This was such a fun comic! The art style is really cool and vibrant, and I loved the relationship between Danny and Luke. If you like the Marvel Netflix shows featuring these two, then I’d definitely recommend this comic. (more…)

TOP TEN TUESDAY: Top Ten Books I Want My Hypothetical Future Children to Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week. This week the topic is all about the books we want our future hypothetical kids to read – or if we have any young children in our lives like nieces and nephews, what books we’d love them to read. I don’t know if I’ll have children, but there are definitely some books that I feel young kids should read, and books that shaped me and I’d love to share.

The Magician’s House Quartet by William Corlet
This series was one of the first to make me cry and I was less than ten years old. I’m not saying I want to make my hypothetical children cry but I’d like to see if it affects them as much as it did me.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
This whole series is magical but The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the most magical and I think it’s one of the most accessible for younger readers.

The Animal Ark series by Lucy Daniels
I actually gave all my Animal Ark books, all 70+ of them, to my Godmothers daughter years ago, from what I heard she did enjoy them and I hope now she’s a teenager that she’s either got them in a safe place or has passed them on to someone else to love. (more…)

REVIEW: Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Vivian Carter is fed up. She’s fed up with her school’s sexist dress codes, the gross comments from boys in class and how her teachers let it happen. Viv has had enough. Inspired by her mum’s youth as a punk rock Riot Grrrl, Viv creates Moxie, a feminist zine she distributes anonymously to her classmates. Moxie becomes its own thing as girls start sharing it and come together to spread the Moxie message. Before she knows it, Viv has kickstarted a girl revolution.

I adored this book! Moxie is about teenage girls learning about how feminism isn’t a dirty word and that they can stand up to casual sexism in a place where they’re supposed to be safe – school. Seeing Viv and her friends slowly learning what feminism means, that yes it’s about equality but it can also offer a sense of unity, is wonderful to see.

I loved Viv from the very beginning. She’s always been the “good girl who follows the rules” but when the small little jabs that happen day in, day out at school, something inside her ignites and she acts. I can feel Viv’s frustration, fear and excitement with this Moxie movement she almost unwittingly starts. She is kind of making it up as she’s going along and that makes it all the more exciting. I also really liked her friends and how they didn’t always agree on everything, they may have small disagreements, but they still support each other.

The great thing about Moxie is that it tries to show the different sides of feminism. There’s instances where Viv see’s injustices but not all of them as she’s white and it’s not till a girl who’s black explains it to her that she realises where she may not have been as inclusive before and does her best to change her attitude. Another thing was that while it never took the outlook from Viv and the other girls, it took a moment to show how decent guys just don’t always get what it’s like, even when they are nice and don’t like other boy’s sexist behaviour. There’s so many great quotes in Moxie but one of my favourites is “I know all guys aren’t dicks, I get it. But the thing is, when there are so many dickish dudes around you, it gets hard to remember that, you know?” It’s a pretty perfect response to the #NotAllMen argument when women speak out about what they go through.

Moxie is a fantastic book. Seeing the girls of a high school, with all the usual cliques coming together across the social divides that are usually there in high school, is wonderful to read about. It gave me this funny feeling in my chest because so much of what Moxie is about felt so real to me. I loved that it offers this sense of hope and unity, so much so that I ended up getting teary-eyed as I finished Moxie. I loved it so much and it’s currently my favourite read of 2017. 5/5.