Rebecca Q. Liu

5 days ago | theguardian.com | Rebecca Q. Liu

It has a plot and a cast that seem cooked up during a hallucinatory fever dream. It shouldn’t work, but it does – and so splendidly, too. In Paul Feig’s comedy Spy, Melissa McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a timid CIA desk agent who gets sent out into the field by her fearsome boss (Alison Janney) after the death of her slick Bond-like colleague, Bradley Fine (Jude Law, in a rare comedic turn). The cast is full of delightful surprises.

Feb 8, 2025 | theguardian.com | Rebecca Q. Liu

I have seen horrors so limp and lifeless they have turned into comedies. I have seen comedies so dedicated to killing every last one of your brain cells that they have become total horrors. I have seen sex scenes drained of all sex. I have seen Jim Carrey play against type as a hardboiled detective with a light Polish accent. I have seen Nicolas Cage play to type as a hardboiled action lead in a film with a ludicrous premise (more on that later).

Feb 1, 2025 | theguardian.com | Rebecca Q. Liu

In 2019, the Brooklyn-based literary magazine n+1 published a short story that went viral. Titled The Feminist, it follows the life of a man who turns from a bell hooks-reading Supporter of Women into a bitter moderator in an online forum about how feminism is a cancer. Rejection has hardened him over the years.

Jan 8, 2025 | theguardian.com | Jamie Demetriou |Rebecca Q. Liu |Hannah Booth |Charlotte Northedge |Tim Jonze |Eleanor Thomas | +1 more

Do you want a relationship, or a baby? Hannah BoothAs I sat down with my therapist that day, making small talk as we felt our way into the session, there was nothing to suggest anything extraordinary was going to happen. But that’s the thing with therapy: things emerge when you least expect them. We had been dancing around the same subject for a few weeks: I was 38, single, and my clock was ticking. That, we’d worked out, was the root of my current unhappiness.

Dec 25, 2024 | theguardian.com | Safi Bugel |Stevie Chick |Michael Cragg |Elle Hunt |Ammar Kalia |Rebecca Q. Liu | +4 more

Charles Aznavour – For Me … FormidableThis year I completed Duolingo in French, but found myself no closer to being able to carry out what I would call a conversation. (Exchanging likes and dislikes doesn’t count.) I decided to go Paris to practise on some unsuspecting locals, procured via Hinge. One man proved surprisingly game: he not only spoke excellent English but was a self-described anglophile, more up to date than I am on UK politics and truly passionate about Marks & Spencer.