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Monica Byrne

@monicabyrne13.bsky.social

5.2K followers 780 following 5.9K posts

Writer living in Ireland. AI-free. Buy THE ACTUAL STAR: https://www.monicabyrne.org/the-actual-star. Reps at CAA, DG&B, and Kaplan/Perrone. She/her. monicabyrne.substack.com patreon.com/monicabyrne

www.monicabyrne.org

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · Oct 23

"When a book is this ambitious, either it is a thumping success or it falls on its face. Happily, The Actual Star is a stone-cold masterpiece. It is one of the most moving novels I have read and surely a contender for major awards."

Welp. 😳

The Actual Star review: A masterpiece of imaginative world building

Monica Byrne's fantastic second novel follows three storylines in the past, present and future, all of which are linked by historical threads and religious ideas, says Michael Marshall

www.newscientist.com

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 2h

Yeah, that was a great moment!

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 3h

🤣🤐

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 3h

I particularly enjoyed this extended shot of John Hurt eating a sandwich

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 3h

Tonight’s movie: THE FIELD (1990). It was very good. Sure casts a light on all the Americans now buying property in Ireland. 🙃

John Hurt was especially enjoyable as the village rapscallion. I wonder where that Sean Bean kid went after this, though, he kind of disappeared……….

John Hurt in a 1930s Irish cap looking crestfallen

Richard Harris with a hat and a white beard, looking judgmental

Sean Bean, young, in an Irish cap, looking smug and mischievous

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Reposted by Monica Byrne

Shane Novoa Rhoades @shanenovoarhoades.bsky.social · 7h

It’s also hard to buy when he’s investing in Israeli hotels

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Reposted by Monica Byrne

Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 6d

I saw One Battle After Another and did not enjoy it. I am clearly the outlier but I thought the sexual politics of the film were bad. The representation of Black women revolutionaries was painful and I think the fixation on interracial sex and a mixed race character is a hackneyed trope.

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 7h

Yes, I thought the same thing.

Reposted by Monica Byrne

Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 1d

Yes, because NYT is a fascist institution

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 1d

Douthat is laundering hard core white Christian supremacy into the mainstream, with the NYT's blessing.

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 1d

Ross Douthat treats this guy like they're having some deep conversation about the relationship of Christianity and the government, but the dude is a garden-variety dull, shallow, hateful, worthless bigot with nothing interesting to say, just endless riffs on "God hates everything/everyone I do."

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 11h

I started watching Kramer vs Kramer and was horrified. So many movies like this

Matthew Willis (Naval Air History) @navalairhistory.com · 11h

Having recently caught up on a number of ’classic’ films that I’d missed like Taxi Driver, The Godfather and Scarface, or reaquainted with ones I haven’t seen in decades like Heat, I am quite happy for there to be a c.50 year moratorium on films about white masculinity

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 11h

My house smells like ginger candle, mulled wine, and curry stew, and it’s wonderful

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 11h

Yes, this. Really tired of the “but we’re all just so complicated 🥺 👉🏻👈🏻” movies from white men

Chris Lawrence @chrislarry33.bsky.social · 11h

In some ways it shared same flaw as Killers of the Flower Moon, by centering Leo, especially as losers, you have to flatten the non-white women who are the plot while through the lens of white male filmmakers who feel the need to redeem whiteness while they seek to also vilify it.

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 11h

Bruhhhh. Yes this, absolutely.

I hated that movie. One of Scorsese’s regular old mafia intrigue movies, except involving Indigenous peoples this time, as a prop. Could have swapped out for any people.

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 11h

Ahh interesting. My memory of it is mainly the disgust after it won the Oscar for Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain…. I’m not sure I was reading reviews as actively back then.

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 12h

It’s Crash all over again 🤮

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 12h

More “biracial children will save us all” shit.

Also, just really hard to buy Leonardo DiCaprio as either a revolutionary, or as the loving father of a daughter played by an actor who is the same age as the women he dates in real life

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 12h

Thanks so much for the links, everyone. I feel less crazy.

It felt like the theme was: “this hypersexed dark-skinned Black woman violent revolutionary stuff isn’t sustainable, we need a nice tempered (with whiteness) light-skinned offspring with a more moderate approach”

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Reposted by Monica Byrne

Wouter de Boer @weedebee.bsky.social · 12h

Here you go:
bsky.app/profile/cand...

Candice Frederick @candicefrederick.bsky.social · 12d

blackgirlwatching.substack.com/p/one-battle...

One Fetish After Another: PTA Exploits Black Women and Averts Revolution

One Fetish After Another: PTA Exploits Black Women and Averts Revolution

Paul Thomas Anderson's action flick leaves much to be desired.

blackgirlwatching.substack.com

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Reposted by Monica Byrne

Candice Frederick @candicefrederick.bsky.social · 12h

bsky.app/profile/cand...

Candice Frederick @candicefrederick.bsky.social · 17d

. @aishaharris.bsky.social points to some of my issues with One Battle After Another her review www.npr.org/2025/09/24/n...

'One Battle After Another' wants a revolution

Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Teyana Taylor star in Paul Thomas Anderson's action thriller about the unfulfilled promises of protest and rebellion.

www.npr.org

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Reposted by Monica Byrne

Candice Frederick @candicefrederick.bsky.social · 12h

bsky.app/profile/cand...

Candice Frederick @candicefrederick.bsky.social · 13d

Jezebels, race kink and Cardi B: in One Battle After Another, Black women are still stereotypes www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...

Jezebels, race kink and Cardi B: in One Battle After Another, Black women are still stereotypes

With its hyper-sexualised Black female revolutionary and fetishised depiction of interracial relationships, Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-lauded latest raises questions about how white male directors de...

www.theguardian.com

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 12h

Thanks so much for both of these. I had only seen praise of it, so I was second-guessing my own reaction…turns out I was reading the wrong people.

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 12h

AHA. Well, already this headline nails it for me.

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 12h

Have any Black women critics written about One Battle After Another?

Because the more I think about the racial politics of that film, the more it bothers me. But I don’t know if I’m projecting or overreacting.

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 14h

😆 At the time I was shrugging sheepishly about how to fasten a boutonnière to my date, but yes, totally.

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 14h

Me in 2025: “Wow all my friends’ kids are wearing these teeny-tiny micro-dresses to their Homecomings, is this a new thing??”
Me in 1996:

Me as a sixteen-year-old wearing a teeny tiny micro-dress

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 15h

Slept an extra two hours on a Sunday and now I am fully realized human being