The Drama: sex, secrets and that gobsmacking twist – discuss with spoilers

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s dark dramedy is a stylish acting showcase, but does it do justice to its weighty themes? Ever since its first trailer dropped – and, on certain corners of Reddit, even before that – the internet has been abuzz with speculation over just what goes down in The Drama . The auteur production powerhouse A24 somewhat ingeniously pitched writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s pitch-black film as a tart romantic comedy, with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a seemingly happy couple derailed by a disturbing revelation a week before their wedding. The actors, among a cohort of vanishingly few young movie stars, appeared as their characters in a fake wedding announcement in the Boston Globe; Zendaya’s rumored marriage to actor Tom Holland became a meta discussion point on a press tour that saw her method dressing in “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”, her wardrobe slowly darkening in a nod to something gone horribly awry. The Norwegi...

Judy Blume Forever review – inspiring portrait of a fearless author

As the author’s teen novels continue to aggravate the far right, this illuminating documentary spotlights her incredible career

What’s most astonishing about Judy Blume isn’t that her books keep selling 50 years after they burst onto the kids lit scene, but that they are no less potent than they were back then. With candid depictions of topics like menstruation, bullying and teen sex that is pleasurable rather than the fulcrum of a morality tale, Blume’s books still dominate summer camp cabins and school libraries daring enough not to ban them.

Deenie, a stunning 1973 novel about a girl whose scoliosis impinges on her mother’s dreams for her daughter’s modeling career, is the current favorite among the under-12 residents of this reviewer’s household. The same title, which also addresses masturbation with striking candor, aroused members of the far right. In a fabulous scene in Judy Blume Forever, Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s documentary about the iconic writer, Blume is seen on the television show Crossfire sparring with conservative commentator Pat Buchanan in the early 1980s. The petite mother of two doesn’t lose her composure in the face of her critic’s prurient hang-ups. “Did you read the whole book or just the highlighted parts?” she asks in the warm tone of a cocktail party host offering hors d’oeuvres.

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