Sarah Potter picks 5 movies to pair with ‘Sober Magic’
In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
Sarah Potter is psychic medium, Tarot reader, and professional witch. Her new book Sober Magic: Using the Tarot and Ritual in Your Journey Away from Drinking is available on December 2 wherever you get your books!
We asked Sarah to pick a few movies that pair well with Sober Magic.
Practical Magic (1998)
This one and The Craft are the films that made me want to be a witch! Or maybe they are the films that made me realize I was a witch! I love the scenes of Sally and Gillian and their cool aunts casting spells, especially the love spells. The scene where Sally is casting a love spell that was supposedly impossible to manifest weirdly enough inspired me to cast an outrageous love spell that came true in unexpected ways. Sober Magic is ultimately a book about finding your power, and this movie reminds me of the resiliency, strength, and fun of sisterhood that eases a similar type of journey. And Nicole Kidman’s style in this movie is still the ultimate fashion inspiration for me!
The Love Witch (2016)
Of course I needed to include another witch movie here! This is a stunning visual spell of technicolor, desire, and again, a woman’s quest to understand her own power. This movie came out around the time I was trying to get sober again and it reminded me of how incredible it is to be a witch! I wanted my life to be feel technicolor, and this film showed me that the path to that kind of glamour and empowerment was through reigniting my spiritual path and casting bigger spells! When Elaine says “Witchcraft is my religion and it saved my life” I felt that in every fiber of my being, because I feel the exact same way. Witchcraft is what has been able to help me stay sober, and I want to share that magic with anyone else who is struggling because they feel too sensible, too emotional, or empowered and have had to turn to substances to cope.
Frances Ha (2012)
Black-and-white New York, messy apartments, big dreams. Frances is twirling through life without a map, propelled by instinct, humor, and heartbreak. Her journey isn’t about “making it”—it’s about finding herself in the spaces between ambition and reality. Like recovery, it’s nonlinear, awkward, luminous. Frances Ha captures the ache and wonder of figuring out your transformation, and it pairs with Sober Magic as a love letter to the liminal in between: to the moments where you leap before you know where you’ll land. I learned how to have sober fun in NYC and for that I will forever be grateful for this city that is my home. It’s truly the most magical place in the world where dreams do come true, even though it can be challenging. There’s no other place like it.
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Hear me out on this one because maybe this isn’t the most obvious Sober Magic connection, but it is! Sofia Coppola turns history into a pastel fever dream, soundtracked by New Order and The Strokes. It’s so indulgent, beautiful, and ultimately about the hollowness of living inside a carefully curated spectacle. The film is about identity as performance, pleasure as armor, and the slow, quiet realization that something has to change. In conversation with Sober Magic, it speaks to the turning point: the moment you look around the life you’ve built, glittering but lonely, and feel the pull to wake up. Something MUST change or life will change it for you.
Just My Luck (2006)
A Y2K rom-com sparkling with magical realism, Just My Luck follows a Manhattan It girl whose charmed life flips after a fateful kiss (warned by a Tarot reader!!). Beneath the pop sheen and epic early 2000s fashion lies a story about agency, resilience, and learning to create your own magic when luck runs out. As a companion to Sober Magic, it’s a joyful reminder that transformation doesn’t always have to be heavy—sometimes it starts with one unexpected moment that shifts everything. And like Chris Pine’s character, I too worked at a bowling alley where punk bands played, and I used to watch this after shifts that were particularly challenging and watch the Tarot reader at the party turn over the cards that promised a twist of fate and change of circumstances. I wished for that too and thought maybe things could get better. And the did, as now I’m that tarot reader at the party! But I also have my dream life and it’s all thanks to tarot and witchcraft and sobriety, which is the heart of Sober Magic.