A review by hangryforfiction
Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West

4.0

A couple of weeks ago, I finished Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West and I loved it. I am such a huge fan of Lindy's previous book, The Witches Are Coming, which I read last year, and it now sits on my favorites shelf. This book, which is a completely self depreciating and self aware, totally tongue in cheek guide to some of the most popular cult classic movies, starting with THE perfect movie (no spoilers!) and quickly followed by Love, Actually, or as Lindy calls it, Shit, Actually. I love Lindy's writing and the stream of consciousness reviews in this book are hysterical for the most part. The book felt like reading someone live tweeting their rewatch of the movies and I found that to be so fun. I listened to this on audio, which is definitely the medium I recommend. Lindy narrates the book herself and there's just no one else who could read the jokes to land properly. There were some movies that I've never seen, though still knew enough about to listen to the chapter about it, and still found them hilarious, such as The Rock, Terminator 2 & Twilight. I have never seen Reality Bites or Garden State and honestly don't know anything about those, so I did end up skipping those chapters. I also skipped the HP chapter because I've never seen it and also fuck JKR. Somehow the book also made me want to rewatch Face/Off, so now I need to figure out how to make that happen. Even the movies Lindy covered that I do love, like Top Gun & The Lion King, every joke Lindy makes about the movies is so spot on and I found her take to be so funny. If you like comical books, and especially if you're a movie lover, I definitely recommend you grab the audio of this one.