Boy Movies #15

The Guillermo del Toro issue, feat. Nicole Zhu

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Above all, this newsletter has been an excuse to have long talks about movies with my friends. I delight in gathering the smartest, funniest, most thoughtful people I know and using their wit to increase my social standing on Substack.com. Someone I’ve been wanting to have as a guest since the beginning is Nicole Zhu, noted Avatar enthusiast and a fantastic writer, whose own newsletter I’ve spoken about before but is worth mentioning again because it’s always a reliable source of inspiration for me. I specifically wanted to have her on to talk about Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro’s big-brained 2013 action sci-fi film about people who pilot giant robots using the power of love and weaponize them in an ongoing alien war (hell yeah), because it’s both an interesting example of a boy movie and a favorite of Nicole’s. “This is one of my comfort movies,” she told me during our chat. “I pro…