Movies 2025 Movie Discussion Thread

[Brian Fowler]

4 hours ago, J.H. said:

Supergirl - Why did I do this to myself? This movie is totally the "I need to keep the Wikipedia entry for this movie open" movie because I never made the Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen was also Marty Mcfly's brother connection until this! Fuck, Hart Bochner went from the male love interest in this to ending up as coke-head Harry in Die Hard!

Then there is the kinda weird Jimmy Olsen in his 20s trying to score on Lois Lane's underage sister! 

GREAT RAO!! Did the Salkind's just not give a fuck?

James

Christopher Reeve was supposed to have a cameo in the movie. Until he read the script. Suddenly he was too busy with classier work, like co-writing Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

[The Comedian]

18 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

BTW, on the Hoosiers talk, the real head coach of the Milan team that won the title was only 26 years old when it happened. So not only is that an improbable backstory in the movie, but the real guy would've been 11 at the time of the incident.

I'm pretty sure they only threw that backstory in there because people going to see a basketball movie called Hoosiers in the mid-80's expected some kind of Bobby Knight allusion...

[Contentious C]

Yeah.

All of Me - Another film in my long line of half-remembered 80s stuff that buzzed in my head.  This, uh, this ain't it, man.  Steve Martin has some funny physical bits, and then the scene with the dirty talk is easily the highlight, especially followed by Lily Tomlin's one relatively serious scene, but nearly everything else in the film is just dull.  And evidently only available in 4:3?  At least that was the streaming variety I got.  I blame Carl Reiner.  Luckily, it's short so I never have to see it again, and it can join Eddie and the Cruisers and a million other things from my childhood that kinda or entirely stink.

In the Earth - The problem with watching a movie because one of the leads resembles one of your ex-girlfriends is that, hey, now you're watching a really trippy horror movie where one of the leads resembles one of your ex-girlfriends.  This isn't bad; it isn't great, but compelling especially since it's about a theoretical pandemic and came out during the pandemic, and the acting is solid.  Weird no one else has mentioned it - seems like it would be a prime candidate for the Horror Review stuff the rest of you do whenever those things come around.  However, if you think for even a split second you have any tendency towards epilepsy, don't watch this; there are a lot of strobe-effect moments and it will fuck you up.  Otherwise, nicely claustrophobic and tighly-wound for a film that's entirely set outdoors.

Jason Bourne - Well, the first set piece is nice.  And the last set piece is nice.  And hey, I appreciate you killing off Julia Stiles and replacing her with Alicia Vikander, but...uh, fuck off, otherwise.  Though a part of me thinks these movies don't get made anymore not because they're bad, but because there's probably been some pressure on studio execs to quit broadly tipping hands about what kind of insane surveillance shit passes for legal.  But yeah, pretend the last 2 of these never happened.

Lord of War - Another of my "half-watched and need to finish" pile.  Kinda hard to picture Jared Leto as the guy who has to escape into drugs because he watched a bunch of 12-year-old boys get shot. Now, watching 12-year-old girls get shot, OTOH...

But seriously, opening aside, this movie would probably have been a lot better with a buff, face-painted Nic Cage throwing a magical axe around, instead of pretending we're supposed to GAF about the problems of someone who is The Literal Problem. I wonder how much anyone associated with the film - and by associated, I mean the many millionaires who brought it into being, not the Average Joes who are the film industry equivalent of this movie's child soldiers - has ever done to make a real difference about this issue they allege to care about.

Oh, and Ethan Hawke saying "nucular" really undercuts your grandstanding.  Pile of preachy nonsense, though reading Station Eleven at the same time made me realize that, no, people would not leave car carcasses to rot on the highway during an apocalypse; they'd probably break those down toot suite, like the plane scene in this movie.

Jupiter Ascending - The kinda-sorta mother of 3 Mad Titans saves a planet from destruction with the help of, in order: the seal of approval of half-a-million bees; the quirky populace of a bureaucratic techno-planet; and Star-Wolf, who you'd think to look at him would be good at dancing (possibly the exotic kind?), but really his skill appears to be wrecking planes into other, bigger planes in an extraordinarily timely manner.  Someone else on Letterboxd mentioned this being not one whit less ridiculous than Guardians of the Galaxy, and that's 100% correct.  If there's anything that actively bad about it, it's Eddie Redmayne's hamminess.  The rest is just the Wachowskis being weirder than everyone else out there, and evidently no one can handle that.  That said, this still would have been better as a limited series or a TV show.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Oops, never got around to this before the best of the 2010s poll.  Wish I had now.  Why did this hit so hard?  Yeah, I'm a 90s kid, I get the references, but...oof.  I think it's ultimately that my childhood felt like crap, and as complicated and weird and crazy as Charlie's escape from his problems was with Sam & Patrick, at least he *had that*, and if I could rewrite my own history to more closely resemble this, I probably would.  Clearly autobiographical, definitely hits like a ton of bricks, certainly full of cheap tricks to tug at your heartstrings, and I already want to rewatch it. 

Edited March 15 by Contentious C

[zendragon]

Jupiter Ascending is actually quite underrated in my opinion  

[Andrew POE!]

Movies today...I started watching Hoosiers.

Night Must Fall (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Night Must Fall is saved by Robert Montgomery's role as Danny and Rosalind Russell's role as Olivia. This is my first exposure to Richard Thorpe as a director and I have to say he doesn't really do that much as a director. For a movie that in some ways is similar to Hitchcock's British Era thrillers, it's not very thrilling.

I did like the time lapse scene of the forest at the start and some of the interactions with the other characters and Danny does resemble Hitchcock's later Shadow of a Doubt.

Official Competition (Hulu, leaving on 3/15) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Official Competition didn't grab me as much as I wanted it to as the movie progressed. I'm all for movies that parody and shatter norms in movies - The Player comes to mind as does Barton Fink. The problem with this is it isn't very interesting and spent relying on the three actors to carry the movie.

Penelope Cruz as Lola Cuevas is a parody of every self-important arthouse film director you can think of - from her frequent collaborator Pedro Almodovar among others. Antonio Banderas essentially plays as a parody of himself with Felix - I thought it was amusing he would play an astronaut that encounters a tribe on an island. Oscar Martinez as Ivan Torres has the character as a more studious, professor-ly actor who would likely have been a follower of Stella Adler school of acting.

Much of the movie is spent following the slights all three have against each other and within the rehearsal space. It's somewhat amusing to see what they put each other through (Lola destroying their awards, Felix faking his cancer diagnosis, Ivan offering praise of Felix only to be lying).

As a result, the movie is a slow crawl to the end without much in the way of memorable scenes or even a story arc. There is a climatic scene where Felix causes Ivan to go into a coma through his martial arts training, but that's about it.

Official Competition is officially a well executed misfire.

The End of Violence (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

"Dime por qué será
Dime por dónde vas" -Jose Gonzalez, "El Invento"

The End of Violence I think if it came out 20 to 30 years later would have been a better movie. The premise of the movie - where every character essentially is united through the application of violence - speaks to our current times than to the times in 1997. A movie executive named Mike Max (Bill Pullman) leaving his wife Paige (Andie MacDowell) after nearly dying from a kidnapping is interesting if not executed very well. There's something that speaks more to today for the quiet dignity of work and just living a life that Mike does as a landscaper (which echoes later in Wenders' Perfect Days).

The other main characters that receive a focus in the movie - Ray (Gabriel Byrne) and Cat (Traci Lind) - don't have as much screentime but some aspects are compelling. Ray's work in surveillance is a bit crude for the time in 1997, but means a lot more in 2025 - it's crazy how much the words of the intelligence agent Ray talks to in a scene matters post 9/11 & post PATRIOT act United States. How Ray died made me wonder if the woman who was a housekeeper for Ray was the sniper or if the intelligent agent had someone else do it.

(I chuckled when I saw characters in the movie using Netscape Navigator. Poor Wim Wenders, how little did he know.)

With The End of Violence, many of the story threads weren't compelling to watch but were atmospheric. I did like the scenes where Mike visits his house and watches his wife cavort with Six O Nine (K. Todd Freeman) and the scenes with the kidnappers were funny in a Cohen Brothers way, but that was few and far between. The themes for the movie about the role of violence in entertainment and in Hollywood weren't that well developed.

I just wanted The End of Violence to just end, but there aspects that were good.

[The quoted song lyric is due to the usage of Spanish in the movie and some of the same themes of the song were applicable to the movie for me]

The Portrait of a Lady (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

With this as my first exposure to Jane Campion (I know....I need to watch Sweetie/An Angel at My Table/The Piano/The Power of the Dog ASAP), The Portrait of a Lady surprised me.

In most hands, the movie would be an attempt at period dramas like how James Ivory does. In fact, Ivory did a relatively terrible movie about the Henry James book The Bostonians.

With Jane Campion, she does something very different. The opening scenes have various Australian/New Zealand girls talk about love and is peppered with out of frame shots and imperfections - it's like Sofia Coppola before Sofia Coppola.

Then we go to the setting of 1852 in England. Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) grapples with the same issues about love. She wishes to be free and independent and her uncle Mr Touchett (Sir John Gielgud) gives her an inheritance. She attracts many suitors including her cousin Ralph Touchett (Martin Donovan), Lord Warburton (Richard E Grant) and Caspar Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen). At one point, she fantasies about all three men romancing her before they disappear!

Throughout the movie, she has other people make decisions for her; Serena (Barbara Hershey) arranges a marriage between Isabel and Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich). Osmond really doesn't have an interest in Archer at all; that is, until he learns of her inheritance. I loved the scenes where Osmond and Archer meet in secret in the catacombs - there's a certain level of menace in those scenes. The scene that blends past footage and superimposing Kidman's character is inventive; Archer sees Osmond as the parasols are hypnotizing her and she appears completely naked for a brief moment before collapsing.

The rest of the movie has to do with Osmond controlling over Archer's thoughts and behavior; Osmond has little interest in actually seeing Isabel Archer happy despite saying to the contrary. It can be considered that Osmond doesn't do physical abuse, but it's most certainly is verbal abuse with his tone and behavior. I thought it was a great bit of acting to have Malkovich respond sarcastically in almost every scene with Kidman. Even when his character says "I love you," you can't help but detect the subtext and undertone of disgust.

Archer eventually learns the revelation about Pansy (Valentina Cervi) and she is daughter to Serena and Osmond from Countess Gemini (Shelley Duvall) in a really great scene. Archer completely is overwhelmed and is almost climbing up the walls in sadness. She then decides to visit her cousin one last time before he dies.

I really liked the ending as well. Archer encounters Caspar Goodwood after the funeral and they kiss. She runs to the manor door and stop. The door is either locked or she is hesitating. She is thinking of returning to Caspar or going back inside (and eventually back to Osmond). We're left not knowing.

For the most part, I really liked The Portrait of a Lady. Cinematography is incredible with really great shots throughout the movie; it's shot completely differently than most period dramas I've seen.

 

[Mike Campbell]

On 3/14/2025 at 7:46 PM, J.H. said:

I never made the Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen was also Marty Mcfly's brother connection until this!

I was today years old when this connection was brought to my attention as well!

[odessasteps]

Id forgotten how good the cast is in this picture. 

[Andrew POE!]

Movies today...had to do stuff offline for most of the day so no Hoosiers watching.

The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (saw at the theaters) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Probably one of the most adult 'kids' movies' I've seen in awhile. The Day The Earth Blew Up references a lot - you got They Live for the overall plot, The Day The Earth Stood Still (the most obvious touchstone), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1976) with one of the characters doing 'the stare' that Donald Sutherland did, and Armageddon for the climatic scene on the asteroid coming to Earth. Kids won't get any of the references at all.

The movie is delivered with a madcap Marx Brothers-like energy. Porky Pig & Daffy Duck (Eric Bauza) are pretty much a PG rated Ren & Stimpy minus the obsession with bodily fluids and homosexual subtext. Peter MacNicol as the Invader, Candi Milo as Petunia Pig, and Fred Tatasciore as Farmer Jim/the Scientist round it out.

A lot of the humor is a bit on the dark side with Porky and Daffy losing their house, jobs, and Daffy pretty much acting like Roddy Piper's character from They Live for most of the movie.

The reveal for what the alien was actually doing was a bit inventive and make the title have a nice pun. I loved the needle drops for "Everything I Do, I Do For You" (which makes me want to track down a Blu Ray of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and in a madcap sequence to R.E.M. "It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)."

The drawback to the movie is it's a bit inconsequential for the plot but there's some heart to Porky and Daffy's relationship.

Aftersun (saw on Netflix, leaving on 3/20) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

Growing up as a kid, my family took a trip to Panama City Beach, FL. In the 1990s, Panama City Beach was regarded as "the place to be" for kids raised on a diet of MTV and MTV Spring Break. Girls would flash their breasts to the camera, Ed Lover would look shocked, and there would be a black bar on the screen! What is there not to like? 1990s boys like me would think.

Going to Panama City Beach, I remembered an overwhelming feeling of fear the entire trip. My mother, even in her 30s and 40s, would have a tremendous amount of anxiety that she would subject herself to that would transfer to other people around her (namely myself and my dad). My sister didn't care and happily played in the sand whilst building sandcastles.

We arrive and check into our resort. It's next door to Club La Vela! Yeah, I'll go down there and party! I remembered thinking. There will be pretty girls! I'll talk to one and I'll score! (Once again, a steady diet of MTV and Beavis & Butthead fueled those thoughts). During the entire trip, I fancied a girl who was a bit older than me and wore a Confederate flag bikini. Obviously, older me would have stayed away from the girl, much less not even considered her attractive. The reasoning had to do with those male adolescent fantasies about women showing skin and any amount of eye contact in the male's direction. It's like Phoebe Cates coming out of the pool in Fast Times in Ridgmont High, except it was real life.

The point is, I saw one aspect of the trip that my parents saw differently. They were freaking out about how they would pay for the trip, would the car they're driving actually take them there and back, would my mom calm down enough to not freak out about something else.

With Aftersun, while watching it, it made me reflect upon those trips. Calum (Paul Mescal) and Sophie (Frankie Corio) take a holiday to Turkye in the 1990s. The trip is a jumbled mess of confusion - such is adolescence. Through the entire movie, I would have baited breath whenever Calum would go somewhere by himself. He would dive down to retrieve goggles - I thought he would never come back up. He would stand up on a railing - I thought he would jump. He would walk into the ocean at night - I thought he would never come back.

One scene I thought was telling was Sophie singing "Losing My Religion" by herself in karaoke with her dad sitting in the audience. The song's meaning is more to do with having a crush on someone. Yet, within the context of the movie, it's about Sophie feeling like she can't catch up to her father - which is exemplified in the rave scenes where an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) tries to grab a hold of her father.

Another scene I really liked was Calum telling Sophie "there's this feeling, once you leave where you're from, like, where you grew up, that you don't totally belong there again." The present day Sophie is in a completely different place - that we see glimpses of - at the end of the movie. She's married to her wife and has a baby. The ending has her watching the movie of herself as she waves bye to her dad. We then see her father walk away in a room surrounded by white walls. The thought is that it's at the airport - when really, it's the afterlife. The rave is his heaven or the next phase of existence.

Aftersun as a movie doesn't tell a lot but shows a lot. The characters involved seem like actual people with a father that's struggling even financially and is hiding his thoughts from his own daughter. "I don't even see myself reaching 40" he says in one scene. The beginning has Sophie asking him what he was like when he was 11 and "what did you think you would be doing."

Aftersun is an incredible movie that makes anyone reflect on their own parents and their own teenage years.

Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro & Robert Gottlieb (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

At its heart, Turn Every Page is about a friendship. A friendship between a writer Robert Caro and an editor Robert Gottlieb.

Through the course of the documentary, the filmmaker Lizzie Gottlieb highlights why these two men end up still working with each other through most of their recorded public life.

Caro's book The Power Broker depicts a power in one person that the current resident in the White House wishes he could have. Robert Moses was able to build and shape the lives of New Yorkers, both good and bad. Various people involved recount what happened. Bridges get built. People that were living in the 'wrong place' lost their house. One of the examples from the documentary recounts how a developer got to keep a building, while everything else is destroyed.

After the success of The Power Broker, a biography of Lyndon B Johnson is begun. This venture takes both men the rest of their lives to see Caro complete (with the fifth volume still not done). While seeing this, it made me think about how George R.R. Martin doesn't seem to be in an actual hurry to finish his fictional book series about whatever the fuck Game of Thrones is about (just finish GRRM, I don't care, your books are as exciting to read as the instructions to complete a tax return in the United States).

The point being written a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson has more practical application to people's lives. Caro and Gottlieb wax lyrically about Johnson's work, which include a lot of the Great Society programs. What I found interesting is Caro noted meeting a man who had "the 13th briefcase" that we find out contained facetious ballots. I imagine Donald Trump and his lawyers during the 2020 election was hoping for proof of something similar as Caro recounts it.

Even as these two older New Yorkers think about the good Johnson did, I don't suspect they would even be aware of what's currently going on and how of what Johnson did in his presidency is being undo. The Civil Rights Act has a very real possibility of being complete repelled. Medicare could just end. Everything LBJ wanted to have accomplished in his hard scrabbled life will have been undo by another New Yorker named Donald Trump.

 

[Tabe]

Watched a couple movies this weekend. First ones I've seen in months. 

Puzzle - Tells the story of a housewife who feels unappreciated and taken for granted. She bakes her own birthday cake and does all the serving at her party, for example. She's given a jigsaw puzzle and it's drawn in. For no apparent reason, she takes a train into NYC to buy another puzzle at a puzzle store. There she sees a flyer from someone looking for a partner for a puzzle competition. She contacts the guy and they immediately develop a connection. During their practicing, they grow close (too close) and the wife becomes increasingly less likeable before we get an unsatisfying ending. Not bad, should've been better. Also, for some reason, absolutely no one in this movie is willing to turn on the lights, with every scene being far darker than it should be. 6/10.

The Shallows - Blake Lively is Nancy, a med student trying to reconnect with her dead mom by visiting a mysterious Mexican beach to surf. After a wonderful day, she takes one more run and ends stuck 200 yards off-shore while a great white shark circles. What follows is 75 minutes of Nancy groaning in pain and watching other people get killed before she finally escapes after a laughably stupid finish. The plot is dumb, the ending is stupid but it's 90 minutes of popcorn action. Lively carries it well. Turn off your brain for this one. 5/10.

Edited March 17 by Tabe

[zendragon]

Do kids these days even know who the Looney Toons are?

[Mister TV]

14 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Id forgotten how good the cast is in this picture. 

I always thought The Mighty Quinn would be a great pro wrestling name, I can picture someone in early ECW using it and getting over because everyone sings the song during their entrance. 

Edited March 17 by Mister TV

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

5 hours ago, zendragon said:

Do kids these days even know who the Looney Toons are?

My daughter (granted, 23, but still a kid to me) had no idea. She'll look at me like I'm an idiot if I don't know who London Tipton is, though.

[tbarrie]

3 minutes ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

My daughter (granted, 23, but still a kid to me) had no idea. She'll look at me like I'm an idiot if I don't know who London Tipton is, though.

Oh crap, I'm an idiot to young people.

...well, it was bound to happen.

[J.H.]

On 3/16/2025 at 12:58 AM, Mike Campbell said:

I was today years old when this connection was brought to my attention as well!

If you think that's something waif until you make the Mitchell to Blade Runner connection!

James

Edited March 17 by J.H.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

8 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

Oh crap, I'm an idiot to young people.

...well, it was bound to happen.

You get used to it.

[tbarrie]

Honestly, though, I'm a little surprised the Looney Tunes characters have left the cultural zeitgeist, at least among young people. I mean, they weren't exactly the new hotness when I was a kid, but I still watched them a lot. And I guess changing viewing habits mean that watching reruns on TV is no longer a thing, but surely the classic shorts are online somewhere for kids to watch?

[Technico Support]

13 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

I saw the trailer for this a few times before various movies we took our daughter to (probably Sonic 3 and Dogman) and the tone of it felt so weird.  It was like someone at WBD just got around to seeing Ren & Stimpy and thought aping that feel with Daffy & Porky would be smart.

[Dolfan in NYC]

Wasting $325 million of someone else's money broke his brain in a fascinatingly new way:

 

[odessasteps]

2 hours ago, tbarrie said:

Honestly, though, I'm a little surprised the Looney Tunes characters have left the cultural zeitgeist, at least among young people. I mean, they weren't exactly the new hotness when I was a kid, but I still watched them a lot. And I guess changing viewing habits mean that watching reruns on TV is no longer a thing, but surely the classic shorts are online somewhere for kids to watch?

I hesitate to look up how long ago Space Jam 2 actually was. 
 

might be one of those things where WB never managed to turn great adventure into anything close to Disney or even Universal now. 

[zendragon]

4 hours ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

My daughter (granted, 23, but still a kid to me) had no idea. She'll look at me like I'm an idiot if I don't know who London Tipton is, though.

I watched the Sabrina Carpenter Netflix Christmas special and had next to no idea who most of the special guests where

[J.H.]

London Tipton... isn't that just Brenda Song?

Crap if I got that right I'm gonna feel like a creep

James

Edited March 17 by J.H.

[tbarrie]

8 minutes ago, J.H. said:

London Tipton... isn't that just Brenda Song?

Crap if I got that right I'm gonna feel like a creep

Google says you did!

[odessasteps]

Sounds like a kind of tea. 

[Octopus]

Derp. Shameful plug: I’ve started an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for my next film, THE CONVULSIVE BEAUTY OF DESIRE. Feel free to also give me $325 million.

Spoiler

Overview

THE CONVULSIVE BEAUTY OF DESIRE is an experimental short film by The Octopus - David Matthew Johnson with cinematography by independent filmmaker Ryan Anderson. This will be their 9th official collaboration, having previously worked in various capacities together on Ode to the Whale of Christ, The Sublime Hubris, The Ballad of Cheap Burgundy, Sisyphus & The Abraham, The Sixth Film of The Octopus; Filth, and other projects soon to be on the festival circuit.

THE CONVULSIVE BEAUTY OF DESIRE is a film where a man attempts to live his day to day existence, but is regularly distracted by another version of himself doing the same tasks. The fixated self-watching becomes more obsessive and intense as the man is unable to replicate himself’s actions and appearance.

… there will also be balloons …

THE CONVULSIVE BEAUTY OF DESIRE is the latest work of The Octopus - David Matthew Johnson. 

The film is loosely inspired by Lacanian Psychoanalysis in regards to the concepts of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. This will be shot through the meditative and methodical pacing seen in films by David Matthew Johnson, yet in a much more abstract presentation compared to his previous films. The majority of this film will be shot with a void-like infinity background, instead of The Octopus’s traditional use of allegorical realism of living room and household settings. 

“[David Matthew Johnson’s] drastically minimal yet passionately and often unnervingly human filmmaking marks him as a hauntingly personal outsider auteur.” - CineSalon

 

Filmmaker’s Personal Statement:

David Matthew Johnson: THE CONVULSIVE BEAUTY OF DESIRE is a pivotal film project I am extremely excited to start shooting. This film will require me to step outside of my comfort zone of how I direct films, while still maintaining my voice as a filmmaker. I will be stripping away the visual signatures of my previous films, while still managing to capture the same style of pacing, themes, tone, and imagination that defines me as an artist. By the time this film is finished, depending on festival selections and the future screenings of other projects, this will likely be my 10th film. This is a large project and to quote Glorilla, “they say shooters shoot.” I hope you will join Ryan and I as we work on this project. If you cannot financially support, we of course understand, and just ask you share this page with your arthouse cinema-loving friends. We also take high fives (or high tentacles). 

 

[Contentious C]

I would happily take 325K as an advance for my new memoir, THE CONVULSIVE DESIRE OF BEAUTY, which chronicles my teenage years of being a creep with Tourette's.

(Sorry, it was right there, had to)