#but American teen dramedy? no way

[ismellpestilence]

Things to watch if your favorite show is being affected by the WGA strike

This is everything that I have watched and enjoyed. They are by no means perfect shows. This includes complete series, cancelled series, and series that are still in progress. Feel free to add your own recommendations.

Only Murders in the Building (Hulu; currently on season 3)

Murder mystery dramedy set in a wealthy NYC apartment complex

Staring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomes as three residents who decide to make a podcast about the murder

The cast has great chemistry and the twists are compelling

Gravity Falls (Hulu/Disney; ended after 2 seasons in 2014)

An animated show about a pair of fraternal twins who spend the summer with their con-man great uncle in a weird, monster filled town

Absolutely iconic children's show.

Dead End: Paranormal Park (Netflix; cancelled after 2 seasons in 2023)

Animated YA show about two teens, an exiled demon, and a pug, that all work at a haunted theme park and are investigating the disappearances of some of the staff

Similar in style to Gravity Falls

Sadly cancelled by Netflix, but there's also the graphic novels to enjoy

Reservation Dogs (Hulu, ended after season 3 in 2023)

Coming of age dramedy about four Indigenous teens living on a reservation in Oklahoma as they mourn a friend who died and dream of running away to California together

Made by an all Indigenous writers, directors, and main cast

Scrubs (Hulu; ended after 8 seasons 2010)

Workplace comedy about staff at a California hospital

Praised as the one of most medically accurate medical show

Very much a 2000s comedy. Humor can be jarring/mean by today's standards

What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu, currently on season 5)

A mockumentary following 4 vampires and their familiar that live on Staten Island as they go about their boring, pathetic lives

Makes fun of the "cool, sexy, edgy" vampire trope

Based on a 2014 movie of the same name

Dead to Me (Netflix, ended after 3 seasons in 2022)

A traumedy (trauma comedy) following a woman who's husband was killed in a hit-and-run and the perpetrator who lost her own partner and secretly befriends her

It's funny about what happens but does deal with some heavy topics so definitely look into that before watching

The Owl House (Disney; ended after 3-ish seasons in 2023)

About a young girl who wanders into the Demon Realm and decides to stay there and become of witch instead of going to summer camp

Celebrates being the weirdo and being kind to people

Made by many of the same people who did Gravity Falls

The Office (Peacock; ended after 9 seasons in 2013)

Workplace mockumentary about some bizarre people who work in a boring office space

Features a lot of cringe/second-hand embarrassment based humor

Based on the British limited series of the same name

Very much a 2000s comedy that can at times be just plain mean. Season 1 is the worst season by far so if you can get through it the character become way more likeable

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix, ended after 5 seasons in 2020)

An animated fantasy about a young soldier who simultaneously discovers that her side is the aggressor in the war and that the planet has chosen her to be it's legendary protector. This forces her to leave the only home she's known and her childhood friend to fight for the rebellion, who she thought were her enemies

A remake of the 1985 He-Man spinoff series

Very "defeat them with power of friendship and also this sword you found in the woods"

BoJack Horseman (Netflix, ended after 6 seasons in 2020)

An adult animated comedy about a self-centered, washed-up 90s sitcom actor (who is a horse) as he struggles to become famous again and break out of his destructive habits

Satirizes Hollywood, media culture, and American politics

One of those shows where you aren't supposed to admire the main characters

Big trigger warnings for this one. Seriously.

Good Omens (Amazon Prime, currently on season 2)

Follows the misadventures of a demon and an angel, a witch's descendent, two unskilled witch hunters, a sex-worker, and the antichrist and his friends as the antichrist grows into his power and brings about Armageddon, all set to Queen songs

Based on the 1990 book by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett

The fandom focuses a lot of the shipping side of the show but forget all of that if you plan to watch it

Season 2 wrecked me

Gentleman Jack (HBO Max & the BBC; cancelled after season 2 in 2022)

Based on the real diaries of Anne Lister, a wealthy lesbian in 1830s England who is looking for a wife and to expand her business enterprises

Sadly HBO pulled away and the BBC couldn't afford to make another season without them. What was made is still worth checking out.

Our Flag Means Death (HBO Max; currently on season 1)

A pirate workplace comedy/romcom that loosely follows the real life of Stede Bonnet, a wealthy landowner who ran away to become a pirate due to a mid-life crisis. He wants so badly to be a pirate captain but is far from qualified for the role.

"Traditionally, piracy is a culture of abuse...floggings, keelhaulings. And my thought is, "Why?" And also, what if it weren't like that?" really is the thesis of the show

(Edit) omg I cant believe I forgot:

Avatar: the Last Airbender (Netflix; ended after 3 seasons in 2008)

An animated children's fantasy series in which people can manipulate one of the four elements, and their peacekeeper, the Avatar, can manipulate all four. After being frozen in ice for 100 years, the 12 year old Avatar learns that the Fire Nation has begun a war that he must stop by next summer

Literally the blueprint for the modern animation that we enjoy today. IDK what else to say. It's iconic

Hilda (Netflix; ended after 2 seasons and 1 movie in 2021)

An animated children's fantasy series set in a world full of Nordic folk creatures

After spending much of her life living in the woods with her mom and her pet deerfox, Hilda is upset to learn that her mom now wants to move to Trolberg, a walled-off city where Hilda fears there is nothing interesting to do. She quickly discovers that there is just as much magic and wonder in the city as there is in the woods.

She's voiced by Bella Ramsay and the animation is beautiful. It's all all-around good vibes show.

Interview with the Vampire (AMC; currently on season 1)

After the first interview in the 70s that ended in disaster, Louis de Pointe du Lac reached out to Daniel Molloy and demanded a do-over. He goes back to his life as a black businessman in 1910s New Orleans and the complicated relationship between himself and Lestat de Lioncourt.

It's actually gay enough this time you guys.

I'd also like to add:

The Bear (FX/Hulu; currently on season 2)

A dramedy about a New York chef who inherits a failing sandwich shop after his older brother commits suicide.

Sometimes a found family isn't all sunshine and unicorns. Sometimes its a lot of screaming and resentment and cussing each other out.

It's a very stressful to watch so it's not for everyone, but if you're the type who finds that cathartic then you should give it a watch.

The Sandman (Netflix; currently on season 1)

Begins in 1916 with the capture of the god of dreams by a greedy sorcerer. After he escapes he must rebuild his realm and repair the damage done by his absence.

Trying to describe this show is really, really, difficult. It would be easier to describe what this show isn't.

Based on the DC comic of the same name by Neil Gaiman.

[gemsofgreece]

what is your stance on "my big fat greek wedding"? i need to know! haha

It depends on which movie of the trilogy we are talking about!

I love the original MBFGW. It is very funny and many moments ring true. Idk if you are Greek, but this movie is very loved in Greece. It is not exactly exaggerated, however it is representing the Greeks of diaspora better than native Greeks, because Greeks of diaspora are a little more traditional. It is a common occurrence in immigrants trying to keep their culture and customs alive in a new place. Besides, it was released in 2002, 20 years ago, which was a time such a type of comedy felt very relevant and fresh.

Things are different now - MBFGW 2 and 3 are disappointingly underwhelming. They feel like Nia beats the dead horse again and again. I haven’t actually watched the 3rd but the 2nd movie was an utter disappointment to me. It was some random American teen dramedy with some sprinkles of “Greek misfit”(???? the daughter felt bad to be half-Greek although she was 100% indistinguishable from Americans???) and a few of the old jokes from the first movie regurgitated. Utter, utter disappointment.

I fear the flop of the second movie might have sabotaged the third one too. It is a shame because this one has two important elements: a) it was made solely in order to honour the last wish of Michael Constantine, who wanted his character’s ashes (Mr Portokalos 😢) to return to Greece, which was such a sweet and noble last wish and even nobler that they all did it for him, b) well, it was about the Portokalos family coming to Greece finally, this was such a huge opportunity to rejuvenate the movie series. And yet it flopped, because it’s 20 years after the first movie and the jokes are the same again and Greece is portrayed in a way that is now irrelevant and inaccurate for the sake of ethographic comedy. That’s what I have heard anyway - the movie gets bad reviews from Greeks and foreigners alike. I think it didn’t do well even inside Greece commercially. It’s a pity, especially because it was Constantine’s wish.

But what is a MBFGW movie without Mr Portokalos anyway, right? He was the star and the heart. The first one is a classic you never get tired of.

[becky5203]

Hey benvi/nhie mutuals I just wanted to apologize for not really responding to asks and stuff like I said I would. I know I don’t have to apologize for it since this is just a fandom and it’s not like a job or anything but this is the first real fandom I’ve ever felt actively apart of, as it was going on, and throughout the past year it’s just been so fun interacting with people and seeing what people have to say so, thank you, I guess for making me feel welcome here. I haven’t been involved as much in the fandom recently, partially because I’ve just been really busy lately, but also, I think, because I’m sad to see the show go. This show started during my junior year of high school. I didn’t really get a senior year cause of the pandemic but I did get to watch this show and relive my teenage years through Devi and her friends. I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum as it was being released. I remember being the teenager who makes stupid decisions like Devi and, although I don’t feel completely grown up and still make some stupid decisions sometimes, now I’m more of the adult who just wants to see her grow. I know this is a lot to put on a high school show but, truly, it’s one of the first times I’ve ever really felt seen in a piece of media. And I don’t mean that in a representation sort of way cause I’m not Indian-American (although I am very happy for the Indian-American fans that connect with Devi), but I’m also a teenage girl and I have felt all the emotions Devi has. She has twice as much confidence than I ever had but she’s also a struggling teenager who doesn’t understand the world at all sometimes. She’ll do stupid stuff and it’ll backfire and she won’t learn the first or second time but that’s what teenagehood is like. And it’s over before you know it and one day you’ll wake up and think “wow there are a million things I would do differently and I would never want to do any of it again but I needed to have it cause if I didn’t I never would’ve been who I am today.” If I could put it all into words then maybe I would’ve finally gotten this all out by now, but I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you to this show. Thank you to this fandom. And thank you to the cast and crew for giving us the beautiful, messy teen dramedy we deserve. It’s been a wild ride everyone.

[movienation]

Movie Review: Ray Romano's Italian American New Yorkers cope in all the usual ways -- "Somewhere in Queens"

All things considered, Ray Romano’s “Somewhere in Queens” is a pretty watchable dramedy despite all the “lows” that hang over it. It’s low-heat and downbeat, with low stakes and low ambition. The situations are low on originality and the jokes are strictly low-hanging fruit. “Queens” is about a sensitive New York teen his gregarious extended Italian-American family calls “Harpo Marx,” because…

[tvrundownusa]

tvrundown USA 2023.03.19

Sunday, March 19th:

(streaming weekly): Kitchen Commando (Tubi), Divorce Attorney Shin (netflix), Mayor of Kingstown (Para+, season 2 finale)

(original made-for-TV movies): "The Cases of Mystery Lane" (HMM, earlier, 2hrs), "God Bless the Broken Road" (UPtv, 2.5 hours), "House of Deadly Lies" (LIFE, 2hrs+), "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" (HBO, Nan Goldin profile, 2hrs)

(earlier - hour 0): 60 Minutes (CBS), America's Funniest Home Videos (ABC)

(hour 1): Call the Midwife (PBS, season 12 opener), American Idol (ABC, 2hrs), The Equalizer (CBS), The Simpsons (FOX) /   / The Great North (FOX), Bunk'd: Learning the Ropes (disney), The Circus (SHO), Biography: WWE Legends (A&E, 2hrs), Tournament of Champions (FOOD, 2hrs)

(hour 2): Sanditon (PBS Masterpiece, season 3 opener), American Idol (ABC, contd), East New York (CBS), Magnum P.I. (NBC), Bob's Burgers (FOX) /   / Bob's Burgers (FOX), The Way Home (HALL, penultimate), Your Honor (SHO, series finale), Godfather of Harlem (MGM+), Biography: WWE Legends (A&E, contd), Tournament of Champions (FOOD, contd), The Food That Built America (HIST, "coffee"), Lucky Hank (AMC, dramedy series premiere, ~62mins), Lucky Hank (AMC, pilot simulcast on BBCAm|IFC|Sundance|AMC+)

(hour 3): Marie Antoinette (PBS, series stateside premiere), The Company You Keep (ABC), NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS), The Blacklist (NBC), WWE Rivals (A&E), A Spy Among Friends (MGM+), Impractical Jokers (truTV, special night)

(hour 4 - latenight): Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), Aqua Teen Hunger Force: "Plantasm" ([adultswim], 2022 movie, 105mins)

[preempted, returning next week: Silicon Valley (TBS), The Graham Norton Show (BBCAm) ] [preempted, returning in three weeks: Family Guy (FOX) ]

[famdommcfanface]

Christ the Winchesters trailer looks awful

[joeygoeshollywood]

My 25 Favorite Films of 2020

Well, this was quite the crazy year, especially for movies. While many films that were slated to be released this year were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year still provided some laughs, tears, and thrills both in theaters and in the living room. 

(NOTE: Due to the delayed awards season calendar and postponed Oscar bait films that are unavailable to be seen before the end of 2020, this list will eventually be updated after having seen the following films: The Father, Minari, News of the World, Nomadland, One Night in Miami, Pieces of a Woman, Promising Young Woman)

Here are my 25 favorite films of the year:

25. Kajillionaire 

Quirky filmmaker Miranda July is back with her first feature in nearly a decade. Kajillionaire is a bizarre but captivating tale about a family of criminal grifters and how the daughter reevaluates her strained relationship with her parents after an outsider is welcomed into the fold. Evan Rachel Wood takes what could have easily been dismissed as a goofy caricature in Old Dolio (yes, that’s her name) and turns into a heartfelt portrayal of a woman whose lifestyle of freeloading dictated by her parents (played by Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) becomes her own crisis. In many ways, Kajillionaire feels like a fantasy that keeps people asking, “What on earth is going on?” And this time, it’s for the best. 

24. Freaky

Revamping decades-old plots like the body-swapping antics from Freaky Friday can either result in a predictable failure or a surprising success. Thankfully, Freaky falls into the latter category. In this horror comedy, a deranged serial killer (played by Vince Vaughn) swaps bodies with his victim, a timid teen girl (played by Kathryn Newton). What makes the film work though are the dedicated lead performances, particularly by Vaughn, who is pretty convincing as young girl trapped in a grown man’s body. With a few good laughs and decent thrills, Freaky is worth the watch. 

23. The Outpost

The Outpost is an intense film about the real-life story of small group of US troops isolated by surrounding mountains in Afghanistan, under the constant threat of the Taliban, which ultimately comes to a head in the Battle of Kamdesh. The film captures the harrowing experiences of these soldiers with heart-pounding action sequences, which are fueled by a solid cast including Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, and Orlando Bloom. 

22. Uncle Frank

Paul Bettany may be best known for playing The Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he should be celebrated as his title character in Uncle Frank, a touching dramedy set in 1973 about an NYU professor who returns home to his estranged family for his father’s funeral while his niece, played by rising star Sophia Lillis, idolizes him for teaching her to be her authentic self while he keeps his sexuality a secret. Bettany brilliantly balances the coolness of his stature with the internal agony that ultimately hits a boiling point, which is counterbalanced by Peter Macdissi’s fun performance as Frank’s happy-go-lucky lover who accompanies him back home despite his wishes. 

21. Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy was panned by critics over politics that had absolutely no role the film. Based on the best-selling memoir by J.D. Vance, the newest feature from Ron Howard shows the journey of a boy who despite all odds growing up in a poor family that constantly struggled with abuse and addition managed to get into Yale Law School and achieve the American dream. While both Gabriel Basso and Owen Asztalos hold the film together as the younger and older Vance in the present and flashback scenes, Amy Adams as the impulsive, irresponsible mother and an unrecognizable Glenn Close as the no-nonsense inspiring grandmother that turn Hillbilly Elegy into an acting tour de force. 

20. The Trial of the Chicago 7

Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin sits in the director’s chair once again in this courtroom drama about the real-life protesters who showed up in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. With themes that resonate today, The Trial of the Chicago 7 benefits from its sharp screenplay, well-paced editing, and an outstanding ensemble cast that includes Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Yahoo Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Frank Langella, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Michael Keaton. 

19. Yellow Rose

Broadway actress Eva Noblezada makes her film debut as an aspiring country singer on the run after her mother, an illegal immigrant, is obtained for deportation. Yellow Rose presents a nuanced depiction of US immigration, but at the heart of it is a heartbreaking story of a young woman who struggles between putting her family or her dreams first. Between Noblezada’s powerful performance and solid original music, Yellow Rose hits all the right chords. 

18. Palm Springs

Move over, Groundhog Day. While the Bill Murray classic has largely monopolized the time loop film genre, Palm Springs gives it a run for its money. Andy Sandberg and Cristin Milioti star as the unlikely duo who are stranded reliving the same dreaded wedding day involving mutual acquaintances and their desperate efforts to escape the seemingly inescapable. The Hulu comedy stands on its own two feet for the good laughs, the chemistry between the two leads, and the film’s emotionally-grounded plot.  

17. Let Him Go

Kevin Costner and Diane Lane reunite on the big screen after playing farmer parents in Man of Steel to rancher grandparents in Let Him Go, although this time they are able to display their full acting chops. In this period dramatic thriller, they set out to find their only grandchild following the death of their son only to discover that the widowed daughter-in-law remarried into an infamous crime family. While both Costner and Lane tug at the heartstrings, it’s Lesley Manville, who plays the ruthless matriarch of the family, that really takes command of the screen. Ultimately, Let Him Go is all about family and the lengths one is willing to go to protect it. 

16. Unhinged

In a year plagued by the pandemic, Unhinged led the way to the revival of movie theaters back in August and perhaps in some ways it was meant to be the film to do so as the themes of a rage-fueled society and the lack of human connection carry weight. Russell Crowe stars, as the title suggests, as an unhinged psychopath whose road rage torments a woman and her adolescent son. Unhinged is the epitome of pure entertainment and is why we go to the movies. While it’s not quite the most sophisticated thriller of the year, it’s still one helluva ride. 

15. Emma

Anya Taylor-Joy has had quite the year with both highs (The Queen’s Gambit) and lows (The New Mutants). But it began before the pandemic with the release of Emma, which she stars as the iconic Jane Austen title character, a socialite who meddles in the love life of others while refusing to acknowledge her own shortcomings in that department. Supported with a strong ensemble cast, beautiful production design, and comedic charm, Emma is not to be missed. 

14. The Invisible Man

ln the era of remakes and reboots, very few are as good as Universal’s latest monster flick revival of The Invisible Man. Elisabeth Moss stars as a woman who believes she’s being haunted by her abusive ex-husband, someone she becomes convinced faked his own death and is stalking her without being able to be seen. Filmmaker Leigh Whannell, the writer behind the Saw and Insidious horror franchises, generates good thrills and high-wire tension with the help of high production value and a terrifyingly-good performance from Moss. 

13. Dick Johnson is Dead

Documentarian Kirsten Johnson filmed a beautiful, intimate tribute to her father Dick Johnson, who has been suffering from Alzheimer's in the final years of his life. However, instead of dreading his death, both daughter and father embrace it by having him acting out several scenes of his over-the-top demises. Dick Johnson is Dead may focus on the subject manner of death, but this documentary actually celebrates life and the laughs that happen along the way. 

12. The Wolf of Snow Hollow

Perhaps one of the littlest-known films of the year, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is not your conventional indie comedy horror flick. Writer/director Jim Cummings stars as an overly-heated police officer who attempts to get to the bottom of a string of murders in his small, snowy Utah town by what appears to be some sort of werewolf, though he remains unconvinced. Featuring one of the final performances from veteran actor Robert Forster, The Wolf of Snow Hollow uses its quirky sense of humor to stand out from the rest of the pack. 

11. The Gentlemen 

The Gentlemen is a fun, action-packed, crime caper from Guy Ritchie about the London turf war of drug kingpins. Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Goulding, Michelle Dockery, and Colin Ferrell all round out the strong cast, but its Hugh Grant that really steals the show as the comedically manipulative Fletcher, whose only allegiance is to himself. If you like a stylish film with well-choreographed violence and a fast-paced plot, The Gentlemen should be your cup of tea.  

10. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Some of the best play-to-film adaptations are the films that feel like you’re watching a play, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is one of them. Produced by Denzel Washington, Viola Davis gives a transformative performance as Ma Rainey, known as the “mother of the blues” and the clash she had with a pair of White music producers, but she also butts heads with her trumpet player (played by the late Chadwick Boseman), who also has his own music ambitions. While Davis obviously gives other Oscar-worthy performance, it was Boseman who was able to show how incredibly gifted he was as an actor. And while the world lost him far too soon, at least his last role ended up being his greatest. 

9. The Kid Detective

One of the biggest surprises of the year was how good a movie starring and produced by Adam Brody was. Brody plays a washed up former kid detective who attempts to revive his once-celebrated career of solving mysteries by getting to the bottom of a murder in his hometown. The Kid Detective is a brilliant dark comedy from newcomer writer/director Evan Morgan with good laughs, plenty of plot twists, and a career-best performance from Brody, who proves he’s more than just the pretty face from The O.C. we all know him as. 

8. Mank

Citizen Kane is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made and Mank is a worthy tribute. Gary Oldman stars as the title character Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind the iconic film. David Fincher (The Social Network, Gone Girl) managed to capture the epic scale of the 1941 classic that would make Orson Welles proud. 

7. Soul

Soul is one of those rare existential Pixar films that goes beyond being children’s entertainment. Following in the footsteps of 2015′s Inside Out, Soul depicts what happens to the soul of a jazz musician who’s convinced his time on Earth isn’t over. While the universe created to explain how souls work and the plot that went along with it falls short of its emotions predecessor, Soul is still high-caliber among Pixar films and a great movie for both kids and adults alike. 

6. Another Round

Perhaps the greatest work from Swedish director Thomas Vinterberg to date, Another Round follows four unsatisfied middle aged men who decide to take a theory of task from a Norwegian psychiatrist, who concluded that maintaining a blood alcohol level of 0.050 will enhance their mental and psychological state. Mads Mikkelsen, who’s best known to American audiences as Hannibal Lecter in the short-lived NBC series Hannibal and the Bond villain in Casino Royale, offers a strong, nuanced performance as one of the four educators who embraces this drinking challenge in a film that provides an equal balance of chuckles, cringes, and emotional gut punches. 

5. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

From the crazy mastermind of Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Anomalisa, his latest on Netflix is too a mind-bender. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a surreal, zany, and at times disturbing examination of the human condition as the nameless female protagonist played by an incredible Jessie Buckley mulls over breaking up with her boyfriend (played by Jesse Plemons) while visiting his parents’ house. Accompanied with a stellar production design and a crazy-good performance from Toni Collette as “Mother,” Kaufman newest cerebral feature lives up to his iconic reputation of filmmaking. 

4. Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee is one of the few genius filmmakers who is able to blend multiple genres together and his latest film is no different. Da 5 Bloods is an action adventure, buddy comedy, dramatic character study, and war movie all wrapped up into one about a group of Vietnam War veterans who return to the former battlegrounds to find the remains of one of their fallen soldiers as well as some treasure that they kept hidden years ago. With a strong ensemble cast that includes the late Chadwick Boseman, its longtime character actor Delroy Lindo who steals the show with his powerful performance. Da 5 Bloods is easily one of Netflix’s strongest films to date. 

3. The Assistant

One of the first #MeToo-era films, The Assistant offers the day in the life of a low-level female staffer of a production company who is haunted by the presence of her Harvey Weinstein-like boss (who never actually appears in the film). However, rather than depicting the dramatics of sexual misconduct, The Assistant uses the common subtleties and nuances of the workplace yet maintains the same tension and heartbreak. Anchored by the remarkable, devastating performance by up-and-comer Julia Garner (Ozark), The Assistant is as important as it is well-done. 

2. Sound of Metal

Riz Ahmed gives the performance of his career as a heavy metal drummer and former addict whose sudden battle with going deaf upends his life. Sound of Metal is an incredible experience that gives a rare glimpse in the American deaf community which is enhanced by the remarkable sound design that helps the audience actually hear what the musician is going through. It’s truly one of the most rewarding films of the year. 

1. The Climb

The Climb takes the generic “man sleeps with his best friend’s fiancé” storyline and turns it on its head. In his feature debut as writer and director, Michael Angelo Covino leads as the not-so-apologetic adulterer Mike and Kyle Marvin, who co-wrote the film, is the good-hearted Kyle who struggles to whether or not to forgive his best friend’s ultimately betrayal. Not only is The Climb is quirky and hilariously written, it’s a remarkably well-made comedy with some of the year’s best cinematography. Between a strong cast, a superb screenplay, and the extremely-high production value, The Climb is at the top of the mountain of 2020′s best films. 

[positivexcellence]

Jared Padalecki Reinvents a Lone Star State Icon

Jared Padalecki has been playing the good guy since he was a teen, beginning with his portrayal of flop-haired, square-jawed Dean—every mom’s vision of the perfect boyfriend on the beloved dramedy Gilmore Girls—and continuing to demon hunter and reluctant hero Sam Winchester on Supernatural, the longest-running fantasy series in American television. Now, the thirty-eight-year-old father of three is taking on the titular lead in Walker, a reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger. The role is close to his heart—the series, filmed in part in his current hometown of Austin, tells the story of the state he adores. “This Walker, he toes the line a little more than Chuck [Norris]’s Walker did,” says Padalecki of his embrace of another upright-gentleman role, adding, “Those are the characters I’m drawn to. Men who are flawed but trying to do the best they can.” Men, in no small way, like himself.

You were born in San Antonio.

My parents still live in the house I grew up in. I loved my childhood. I’d bike, skateboard, play basketball, skin my knees, and jump fences. I was outside all the time. You’d play for an hour and then go drink some water out of the nearest spigot on the side of the house and go back to playing. We lived by a train track, so we’d go out there and try to set up a penny and let it get smushed or throw rocks at passing cars, which probably wasn’t intelligent, but there wasn’t a whole lot to do. My mother and father came from pretty simple upbringings, and they built a life and had some kids and now my brother is a surgeon, my sister is an architect, and I wear makeup for a living. [Laughs.]

What was the worst rule to break in your family?

If you were rude or misbehaved, you were going to be in trouble. My parents, understandably in my opinion, would punish us for that. My parents were at our plays and basketball games. They were very supportive. But they also refused to do everything for us. My household had a lot of discipline. What we call “Texas values.”

Such as?

Treating people right, being kind. In Texas, possibly because of that heat, we do things at our own pace. It’s not New York, where it’s bang, bang, bang, get this done, get that done. When I did Gilmore Girls, I was working in L.A. It’s beautiful and full of promise, but you’ll see somebody and you’re like, “Hey, how you doin’?” And they’re like, “Good.” And they move on. In Texas, you’re crossing the street and you’re like, “Hey, how you doin’?” You’ve nev- er met this person and they go, “Well, as a matter of fact…” You end up having a conversation. I’m not saying everything Texas has been in its past—and even is currently—is perfect by any means. But the good I got from Texas I hope to instill in my children and keep with me for the rest of my life.

You moved back to your home state ten years ago.

Yeah. My wife [actress Genevieve Cortese Padalecki] and I settled in Austin. Other places certainly have a lot to offer. But they were never home for me. Here you know your neighbors. They drag our garbage cans back up to our house if they notice. We pick up their packages. There are always two kids from the neighborhood in my living room playing with my kids. “Hey Mr. Jared!” It feels like a family.

Do you see Texas as its own thing, Southern-wise?

I do. Most Texans I know, we call ourselves “Southern,” but we don’t say we’re “from the South.” Texas is almost its own country. If you go to Europe and you say, “I’m from Oregon,” they’re like, “All right, I don’t know what that is.” But if you say, “I’m from Texas,” they’re like, “Ooooh y’all, yeehaw, cowboy hats!” You tell somebody you’re from Texas, they feel like they know you to some degree, and that’s a cool feeling.

What do you want to teach your children?

That you can compete to win every basketball game, to book every audition, to get the highest score on the test, and you can still be kind. You can be a gracious winner and a gracious loser. I don’t think they need to learn two plus two right now. They’ll learn that eventually. But they do need to learn how to be respectful to their teachers, how to show up on time, how to get along with friends in social circles, how to coexist. Because life is difficult, even when life is great.

What’s something your father taught you about being a man?

My dad was always very quick to admit when he was wrong. Every time you can say, “That was my fault” or “I was incorrect,” you are actually becoming a better person. Being quick to accept culpability is a big part of who I try to be. There’s something so wonderful about the feeling you get when you can say to somebody, “I’m sorry, no excuses, I won’t let it happen again.” There’s something very freeing about taking responsibility. I falter, but I really strive to be a good person. And I try to forgive myself when I am not the person that I want to be.

Are you optimistic about the future?

Extremely. I feel like the entire world has been through something so unexpected and tragic. We have all suffered together in our own ways. And this is going to sound weird, but in a wonderful way I think a lot of us learned what we can still be grateful for. When everything is crashing down around you, you have to find purpose. And I want to keep on searching for that purpose. The way I see it is, if you think you have all the answers, then what’s the point of living? I believe that if you haven’t learned from whoever you’re talking to, then you haven’t been listening.  

X

[lgbtpopcult]

2020 Gay Year in Review

It's so nice that we're beginning to see variety and diversity in the lesbian/wlw entertainment offerings of the year.

On the diversity front, The Prom is about an interracial lesbian couple and The Half of it focused on a POC lesbian with a Latina love interest. Summerland had a POC lesbian with a white love interest. Same with Get Even and Never have I ever. The owl house had a latina bisexual lead. In Deaf U we got to see a deaf bi woman date a deaf lesbian and in New Mutants a native American lead with a white girlfriend.

Variety was also more obvious than ever. We got the usual oscar bait period dramas with Ammonite, Summerland and The World to come (3 of them!) but we also got a musical (The Prom), a Christmas movie (Happiest season), a superhero movie (New Mutants) and a teen dramedy (The half of It). Over on the TV side we had some variety left over from other years: crime dramedy killing Eve, animated Shera and the princesses of power and new episodes of Adventure Time on hbomax, superheroes on The boys and legends of tomorrow, a bi badass detective in Brooklyn 99 and teen puppy love in Atypical. 2020 added to that with the Harley Quinn animated series giving Harley and Ivy the awesome, hilarious romance storyline they deserve, The haunting of Bly Manor giving us a ghost story with lesbians (the Halloween story we deserve), The Wilds over on Amazon Prime giving us the fantasy, survivalist adventure we didn't know we needed and The Owl House giving us the animated bi witch show we always wanted. We had fantasy shows like Warrior Nun and Wynonna Earp, mystery solving teen shows like Nancy Drew and Get even and more realistic offerings like Hightown and Never Have I Ever. Plus whatever Motherland fort salem and Ratched are 🤣

We definitely experienced some loss along the way (goodbye One day at a time, Teenage Bounty Hunters and I am not okay with this) but overall 2020 was a very good year. The things we were given were far from perfect but, in a rare turn of events, they were about us, they were ours. And I really can't emphasize enough how important it is to go out of your way to watch these movies and shows and to watch them in a way that matters to those who make them. The future depends on it. There's still a lot more ground to cover and more options are desperately needed. Let's do our best to make sure 2021 will provide!

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Have you watched Lupin? What did you think? (And are you a fan of the books or other adaptations of the character?)

The short answer is yes, I have seen Lupin on Netflix. Overall I enjoyed it so long as I suspended my disbelief at certain things.

Unfortunately it took being struck down by Covid and being bedridden for me to actually to binge watch the whole series. So I was behind the curve when my friends, French and those outside of France, started to talk about it around me. I had to beg them not to give away spoilers until I had seen it all.

It did surprise me that it won rave widespread reviews outside France because usually French drama series don’t travel very well outside of France. I’m sure even Netflix had no idea how successful it would be for them. I’m sure being in Covid lockdown had something to do with it. In any case I don’t begrudge its success as it’s well earned.

However I wasn’t too surprised that within France itself the French reviews were decidely mixed and divisive. The critic at Le Point painfully hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “Le plus gros défaut de l'ensemble reste la pauvreté des personnages, tous unidimensionnels, caricaturaux et aussi épais que du papier à cigarette.“ - loosely translated as, ‘the biggest flaw of the whole thing remains the poverty of the characters, all one-dimensional, cartoonish and as thick as cigarette paper’.

There’s a growing amount of good French stuff on TV and streaming services but a non-French audience will not have had the chance to have seen all of it yet. I can think of any number of French television drama/dramedy/cmedy series that are much better than Lupin with better plots, characters, and even a truer perspective of French society and even modern day France (Dix pour cent (Call My Agent!), Le Bureau des Légendes, Engrenages, Baron Noir, and Paris Police 1900). But you would be hard pressed to find anything that comes close to Lupin just for the sake of something fun to watch during the Covid lockdown.

What makes the current generation of home made French television series so interesting is how much of it is a reflection of France’s own anxieities about itself and its role in a increasingly English speaking dominating world. In a funny way it sees itself as defiant plucky Asterix fighting off the Roman American cultural hordes from totally invading their Francophone culture.

For sure, it has societal and racial issues stemming from its colonial legacy and issues of immigration and integration (France has the largest Muslim population in Europe). However it seems to want to ‘resolve’ these issues through the almost sacramental adherence to French secularist ideals rather than American inspired ideas of social justice and equity. There’s always been something very admirable about the French - from the time of General de Gaulle and perhaps before - always swinging from snooty ambivalence to outright antipathy towards the influence of American culture ‘americanising’ French culture (no to Walmarts or fast food chains for example).

Is it any wonder then that Netflix’s ill-conceived American series ‘Emily in Paris’ was widely hated and mocked within France for just perpetuating those lazy American tropes of Paris and French culture?

Personally I know Francophile Americans, long resident in Paris, who were frankly embarrassed and spent a lot of time apologising to their French friends. I have one American friend who has told me that she was so mad that she would have blind folded Emily and shoved her hard in the car boot and drive her all the way to the poorest of the banlieues in the grimey crime saturated suburbs of Paris - Seine-Saint-Denis came to mind - and dump her preening arse there. She would slap her and tell the spoilt entitied brat to make her own way back home - you know, to her spacious apartment in one of the most expensive arrondissements of Paris that of course(!) any American intern working for French marketing firms can afford.

I digress. My apologies. Watching this God awful show gives me PTSD.

Onto Lupin.

Thankfully Lupin doesn’t try to play to non-French tropes of what Paris is or isn’t. It does skim the surface of current discontents within French culture and society (race, class, power, and money) but ever so lightly so as to not get in the way of just spinning a good crowd pleasing yarn. It invites you to have fun and not to think too much. I have to be honest and say I enjoyed it as long as I suspended my disbelief here and there.

Lupin refers of course to the character Arsène Lupin, the French gentleman thief who stole jewellery from Parisian haute bourgeois and aristocracy at the turn of the century. Lupin, as written in the novels and short stories by Maurice Leblanc between 1905 and his death in 1941, was the archetypical anti-hero, a Robin Hood who stole from those who deserved it but kept the loot himself. He was often portrayed often a force for good, while operating on the wrong side of the law.

Lupin never really made much of an impact outside of France as he had within France where is revered with many French film and television adaptations. In England, we already had a Lupin type character in the form of A.J. Raffles, a cricket playing gentleman thief with his aristocratic side kick, Bunny. E.W. Horning’s stories of Raffles’ daring heists proved to be quite popular with the British public when Raffles first appeared on the scene in 1898. And even later Leslie Charteris’ The Saint took over the mantle from Raffles as the gentleman thief/adventuring Robin Hood.

I think Hollywood tried to introduce him to an English speaking audience (legendary actor John Barrymore even played him) but he didn’t really take off and eventually they found their gentleman thief archetype in Sir Charles Lytton aka The Phantom (played by David Niven and Christopher Plummer) in the Pink Panther movies. So Lupin never got the English audience he deserved.

I first got wind of who Arsène Lupin was when I was growing up in Japan as a child. As strange as it sounds Lupin was big in Japan especially after World War Two. The Japanese did their own take on the Lupin character using Japanese actors and plot lines but it was Lupin.

I don’t know how exactly but I remember watching these scratchy DVDs of these Lupin inspired films. I think it was one of my parents’ Japanese friends who was mad for all things Lupin and he had studied French literature in France. Jogging my memory I now recall these black & white films were done in the 1950s. One starred Keiji Sada and the other version I remember was with Eija Okada (he was in Resnais’ classic film, Hiroshima Mon Amour) as Arsene Lupin called (I think) Kao-no Nai Otoko. I didn’t understand most of it at the time because it was all in Japanese and my Japanese (at the time) was pitiful, but it looked fun.

There was even a Japanese manga version of Lupin which was called Lupin III, - so named because he was the grandson of the real Arsène Lupin.

The 1960s manga series spawned generations of TV series which I do remember watching and finding it terribly exciting if somewhat confusing.

It was French expatriate friends whom my family knew that introduced me to the real Arsène Lupin. They had a few of the books authored by Maurice Leblanc. It was in French so I read them to improve my French but enjoyed the story along the way.

I also remember them showing me scratchy episodes of the 1970s Franco-German TV series ‘Arsène Lupin’ with the monocle wearing Georges Descrières in the lead role. It was a classical re-telling of the adventures of the aristocratic gentleman-burglar and very family friendly viewing. I don’t really remember much of it to be honest.

It was some years before I actually started to read more of the Maurice Leblanc’s novels and short stories collection. I have them all now. I was a teen and I remember being stuck in a snowed in a Swiss Alpine chalet and with nothing else to do but pull out a few dog eared books from the bookshelves belonging to our French host and read to pass the time.

I read Les Dents du tigre, Arsène Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes, and Les Huit Coups de l'horloge and thoroughly enjoyed them in the original French. I was already reading classic detective and mystery novels (Sherlock Holmes, Poirot etc) so it was natural to read the adventures of Arsène Lupin.

I haven’t got around to reading all the novels and short stories but I have read most of them and I enjoyed them all immensely. In the same way Conan Doyle, through Holmes and Watson, manages to conjure a convincing picture of late Victorian and early Edwardian England, so Leblanc manages to give us a taste of Belle Epoque France through the eyes of his suave gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin.

Indeed it's a lot like reading Sherlock Holmes in that you're always trying to figure out how he did it, but the difference is that you are rooting for the bad guy. You can’t help but be drawn to this gentleman thief who is charming, comic, playful, and romantic and generous. Lupin is not an intellectual puzzle-solver but first a master criminal, later a detective helper, who maintains his curious ethics throughout his adventures. In this regard he is very much the anti-Sherlock Holmes; and I wasn’t disappointed when I actually read the story where Lupin faces off with Holmes himself. Brilliant!

I’ve also seen the 2004 French movie with Romain Duris in the Lupin lead role and it also starred the majestic Kristin Scott Thomas and the sexy Eva Green.

It was a decent adventure flick and it was a clear confluence of different Lupin novels (The Queen's Necklace (introducing Lupin's childhood), The Hollow Needle (where the treasure is the macguffin of the story), The Arrest of Arsène Lupin (the gala on the ship as a backdrop) and Josephine Balsamo, (one of Lupin’s most memorable opponents in the The Countess Of Cagliostro).

Romaine Duris, a fine classical actor, was I felt miscast because he didn’t have Lupin’s levity of wit and be at ease within himself. I love Duris in his other films but in Arsène Lupin and even in his other film, Moliere, he seemed ill at ease with the role. Perhaps that’s just me.

The latest Netflix adaptation (or reimagining to be more precise) is a welcome addition to the world of Arsène Lupin.If you don’t over-think it, it’s bags of fun.

Omar Sy is immensely likeable. Sy is a deservedly a big star in France - he won the best actor César for “The Intouchables,” an international hit - and has played forgettable secondary characters in big-budget American special effects movies (he was Chris Pratt’s assistant in “Jurassic World” and a minor mutant in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”). It was reportedly his desire to play Arsène Lupin, whom he’s compared to James Bond (“fun, funny, elegant”), that led to the series, created by British writer George Kay. And it is on his charm that the series largely, though not entirely, rests.

So the basic story revolves around a jewellery heist. Sy plays Assane Diop, a first-generation French-Senegalese man in contemporary Paris. A collection of Lupin stories, a gift from his father - whose undeserved fate Assane set himself to avenge in long-delayed, Count of Monte Cristo style upon a criminal tycoon - has made the actual Lupin books a foundation of his life and profitably illicit career. This fan-ship goes as far as borrowing practical ideas from the stories and constructing aliases out of anagrams of “Arsene Lupin,” a habit that will attract the interest of a low-level police detective (Soufiane Guerrab as Youssef Guedira) who shares Assane’s love of the books. (That the detective also shares an initial with Lupin’s own adversary, Inspector Ganimard, is possibly not a coincidence.)

Among the many comic delights of Lupin, is an unspoken one. Time and again, the show’s hero, master thief Assane Diop is able to slip into a place unnoticed, or by assuming a minor disguise that prevents witnesses from providing an accurate description of him to law enforcement.

Why is this funny?

Because Omar Sy is six feet three (and, since most actors are short, seems even taller), is roughly as wide as soccer pitch, and is memorable even before he flashes his infectious million-Euro smile. This is not a man for whom anonymity should be possible - even allowing for racial bias in a majority-white country, Assane would be memorable and distinctive - and Lupin seems cheekily aware of this. Like the various incredible sleights of hand Assane deploys to pull off his thefts and escapes, his ability to be anyone, anywhere, is treated more as a superpower than as something even the world’s greatest criminal would be able to pull off.

At one point, when he’s slated for a cable news appearance as a much older man, we learn that Assane is also a master of disguise. The revelation of this skill arrives with a wink in the show, and it feels pointless to ask where he learned it, or how he affords movie-quality latex and makeup. Or rather, asking the question feels wrong.

We know this is impossible, the show seems to be asking its viewers again and again, but isn’t it so much fun?

The performances and the production - it has that particularly European filmic quality of feeling natural even when it gets stylish - keep the series warm even as the plot is made up of incredulous contraptions that require everything to go right at just the right time and for human psychology to be 100% predictable. Its physics are classical rather than quantum, one might say, and like the world itself, which becomes more curious the deeper you peer into things, it is best handled along the surface. You do not want to take too much time working out the likelihood of any of this happening. Just go along for the ride.

Somehow, though, it all works because Sy is so magnetic and charming that questioning plot logic feels wildly besides the point. Though he never looks appreciably different in his various aliases (including one ill-conceived live-TV appearance done under old-man makeup and a thick beard), he changes his posture and voice ( if you watch it in French that is) enough to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief, in the same way that any lead actor as Superman has to do when playing Clark Kent. But Sy and the show are at their strongest when Assane is just being his own Superman self, utterly relaxed and confident in his own skin, and so captivating that his ex-partner, Claire, can’t really resist him despite ample reason to.

If Assane seems practically perfect in every way, he is not perfectly perfect. His most obvious failing is that his criminal shenanigans and revenging make him less than reliable in his daily life, affecting his relationships with ex-partner Claire (Ludivine Sagnier, whom non-French audiences might recognise from “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope”), who despairs of his inability to show up on time to see his son Raoul (Etan Simon). Like Sy, Sagnier brings a lot of soul to her part - though onscreen far less, she’s as important as Sy to the series’ success - and the two actors have great chemistry. Also impressive and key to creating sympathy are the actors who play their flashback teenage selves, Mamadou Haidara and Ludmilla Makowski. Really, you could do away with action elements and build a series around them.

This is a pity because Lupin often fumbles its emotional reveals in other parts - the story of Diop being torn between his job and his family feels like wheel-spinning, rather than genuine emotional intrigue.

Soufiane Guerrab is wasted in the Young Detective Consumed by the Case role and spends most of this season pinning colour printouts of book covers to cork boards and getting waved off by his colleagues, who are all blinded or otherwise hampered by careerism.

But to my mind the weakest link is the villain himself and his daughter. Veteran actor Hervé Pierre hams it up as Hubert Pellegrini, a business tycoon who is the patriarch of the Pellegrini family. He just comes across as animated cartoon villain with no character depth (think moustache twirling Russian villain, Boris Badenov, in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon shows). He just emotes anger a lot without any nuance or hint of complexity.

Even Clotilde Hesme who plays the daughter who is unaware of her father’s criminal tendencies is miscast. For the record I adore Clotilde Hesme as she one of France’s most talented classical actresses (that non-French outsiders will not have heard of). She is a classically theatre trained actress and is one of the best stage actresses of her generation that I have ever seen. I’ve seen her in plays where she is just mesmerising. She has said before that she’s more comfortable on the stage than she is on the screen. And when she has been on screen she still has been a powerful presence. She’s actually won a César too. Here in Lupin, she seems to have no agency and looks bored with nothing really to do.I really hope they give her more scenes in the next part of Lupin.

The series is at its best when following Diop enacting his plans, and when revealing each one from a different vantage, making us privy to every moving part like a magician revealing his secrets. The show captures the momentum of a clockwork heist, the tension of sudden obstacles and the ingenuity of improvised responses, with thrilling precision (especially in “Chapter 1 - Le Collier de la reine,” directed by Now You See Me’s Louis Leterrier).

Lupin is also politically incisive when it wants to be; it brings to mind Ladj Ly’s Oscar-nominated 2019 film Les Misérables, which adapted the broad strokes of Victor Hugo’s novel about the 1832 Paris Rebellion, and modernised the story by focusing on the police brutality faced by non-white Parisians.

Lupin opens with Diop disguised as cleaning staff and entering the Louvre after-hours, alongside dozens of forgotten, anonymous non-white workers as they pass by “La Liberté guidant le people,” Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting of the July Revolution of 1830 which replaced France’s hereditary rule with popular sovereignty.

Before any semblance of plot or character, Lupin centres broken ideals and promises unkept (without giving too much away, the show’s primary villain has much more nationalistic view of French culture and history which merely adds to a cartoonish caricature than a complex character). The rest of the episode is about valuable jewels once owned by Marie Antionette - one of the most recognisable symbols of wealth and extravagance in times of extreme poverty - which are put up for auction by the Pelligrini family, and bid on by other wealthy collectors with bottomless purses and no sense of irony.

Granted, beyond this auction subplot, explorations of race and class are largely limited to individual interactions, but the show continues to refer back to (and implicitly comment on) its source material in ways that wink at the audience. An elderly, unassuming target of Diop’s schemes seems like an unlikely victim at first - Diop, though he acts in his own self-interest, usually displays a moral compass - until this victim reveals the colonial origins of her wealth, immediately re-contextualising the ethics of the situation, in a manner that Leblanc’s stories did not. (The show is yet to apply this lens to Arsène Lupin himself, who Diop treats with reverence, but that’s a secondary concern since Lupin is entirely fictional in-world).

Barring some nagging structural problems - like cutting to flashbacks when things are getting exciting, or epilogues that feel ten minutes too long - Lupin mostly works. It plants a few personal seeds early on, which it keeps hinting at without fully addressing, but by the time its scattered elements come into focus, the show finally figures out how to weave them together, and delivers a mid-season cliffhanger that renders many of these flaws irrelevant.

Lupin manages to have fun even with an antiquated premise - the story of a suave con-man who charms his way through high-profile robberies - while adding just enough new spin on the concept to feel refreshing. Omar Sy may not have much to work with, but his alluring presence makes Assane Diop feel like a worthy successor to Arsène Lupin.

Lupin isn’t going to win César, BAFTA, or Emmy awards, or even turn heads for its ability to develop tertiary or even secondary plots or characters - that doesn’t really matter. You’re there to see a difficult hero be difficult and heroic - everyone else is there to be charmed, vexed, or eluded by them. Sy’s performance bounds off the screen, and is almost musical. He floats through scenes like he glides over the roofs and through the back alleys of Paris; he outmanoeuvres his foes with superior literary references and sheer athleticism. He is irresistible and also good at everything he tries, even kidnapping.

I would encourage anyone to watch Lupin for a fun care free ride. But the only caveat I would make is watch it in the original French.

If you don’t know French then put on the subtitles to understand (that’s what they are there for). The real crime is to watch this (or any film or television series) dubbed in a foreign language. It’s disrespectful to the actors and film makers and it’s silly because it’s comical to watch something dubbed over.

Please watch it in the original French.

Then go and read the books. You won’t regret it.

Thanks for your question.

[love-geeky-fangirl]

Ranking every teen drama I've watched

I have gotten really into teen dramas lately, because it's quarantine I can't go out and have fun, but I can still watch other people my age going out and having fun and doing things I don't get to do. Anyway I haven't seen all teen dramas, I was never interested in supernatural ones, so you won't find Vampire Diaries and similar shows on this list.

From worst to best:

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

I will never understand how this show ran for five seasons. It will forever remain a mystery to me. This show is so bad it's good. The writing resembles a wattpad story, Amy's pregnancy is inconsistent (like how was she five months pregnant for like five or six episodes, aren't the episodes supposed to be set a week apart?), the acting is bad (that is not to say that Molly Ringwald or Shailene Woodley are bad actresses, obviously they're not, I'm talking about Amy's sister that has the same facial expression no matter what her mood is supposed to be), some of the views this show expresses are very old-fashioned and damaging (the madonna-whore binary, the fact that they can't even utter the word abortion) and every single male character on this show is a creep and a cheater. I can't believe I watched like thirteen episodes of this. I will never get that time back.

Weirdest moment: "I'm a whore!" "Well, you're my whore." (Was this supposed to be romantic??)

Best moment: none

Glee

This is going to be unpopular and don't get me wrong, I like Glee, but I feel like the writers put much more thought into the musical numbers than the storylines. Again, Quinn's pregnancy is inconsistent (but I'm starting to think TV shows are always inconsistent about pregnancies), the characters don't look like they're in high school at all, the cheerleaders wear their uniforms 24/7 for no reason (Quinn even wore it to her sonogram, like seriously?) the whole celibacy club thing is weird and Mr Schue is a terrible teacher. However, the visuals and the musical numbers are great, Sue Sylvester is iconic (albeit also a terrible teacher) and some of the scenes are really emotional (Kurt singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand made my sister cry) so overall, it's pretty good.

Weirdest moment: Finn praying to grilled cheese (what??)

Best moment: Quinn giving birth to Bohemian Rhapsody, Kurt singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Dawson's Creek

I LOVE their 90s' outfits and Joey and Pacey are really otp material, but I just can't stand Dawson! He got mad that Joey didn't tell him about his mother's affair, as if it was her place to get involved. She was 15! It's understandible she didn't want to get tangled into that mess. He also slut-shamed Jen in a really gross way. He literally stopped talking to her for a day when he found out she isn't a virgin. Why are both Joey and Jen into this guy?? This would've been a much better show if it was called Joey's Creek or Pacey's Creek.

Weirdest moment: the way Dawson's mom confessed her affair to her husband. I don't think any irl human would use this choice of words. Also that scene where Dawson's father was teaching him how to kiss while Joey was watching. Cringe.

Best moment: any time Joey and Pacey are bickering. My shipper heart!

Pretty Little Liars

I loved the book version of this, but the TV version seems way too dramatic. First of all, they romanticized Aria and Ezra's relationship (ewww) and made the whole thing seem much more overdramatic. I don't know how to explain it, I mean the books are also dramatic but the TV show somehow took it to a whole new level. None of the girls look like they're in high school, but I love the way they dress and do their makeup. It's almost as though the writers put more thought into their outfits than storylines. I still loved watching it until Netflix took it off, though.

Weirdest moment: Spencer somehow trying to block A's number from her laptop in the middle of a park and then being confused that it didn't work. Weren't you supposed to be the smart one, Spencer?

Best moment: Haleb in the shower, hiding from Hanna's mom.

Skins

This is a classic. Effy is iconic (I somehow heard about her even before watching Skins) and the musical number at the end of season 1 was out of nowhere but still somehow fit perfectly into the story. I also give this show point for being one of the few TV shows where teen characters are actually played by real life teens. They look their age, talk their age (no "I reject reality" or other cringy lines like that) and aren't unrealistically perfect like characters from American teen dramas tend to be. They look like people you might actually meet in high school. However the show loses points for all the continuity errors (are 8 episodes supposed to be the whole school year??) and the number of unneccessary death/tragic accidents. It seemed kind of over-the-top and unneccessarily dark and brutal at times.

Weirdest moment: Chris's graphic death

Best moment: Wild World

Euphoria

The Gen Z American version of Skins, but with better visuals. Much better. I loved the aesthetic, the colors, the lighting and glitter. Zendaya's a great actress and I give this show points for casting an actual trans actress in the role of Jules. However I find it weird that all guys on this show are complete irredeemable assholes (except of Jules's dad and Ethan that is). Are we supposed to just root for the girls and not the guys? Also I find it hard to believe that any of these characters are actually 16/17. They have sex all the time (yeah teenagers have sex sometimes but on this show they treated Kat as some kind of a chaste nun for being a virgin at 16) and have seemingly no rules and no curfew. It would've been much more believable if they were in college.

Weirdest moment: Nate breaking into Tyler's house, beating him up and then taking a shower. The audacity this guy has!

Best moment: "You did this to me!" and Rue having an anxiety attack on the stage in theater class

Gossip Girl

I know this is also an unpopular opinion, because many claim Gossip Girl is the best teen drama ever, but for me it just got way too soapy as the seasons went on. The first two seasons were believable, even though they didn't really look like they were in high school, but after that it was just more and more weird plot points. I will give this show points for the fashion (I mean Blair's headbands and school uniform inspired a fashion line), the acting ("I killed someone"- iconic) and the choice of background music (Nate and Serena kissing to Paparazzi, Thanksgiving with Watcha Say). Despite the wild twists and turns of events, I just had to keep watching because this show had me hooked.

Weirdest moment: Bart Bass somehow flying off the building for no reason (seriously, what he did there had no logical explanation and defied laws of physics), Dan being Gossip Girl, Bart faking his death and returning more evil than before, Serena becoming Gossip Girl, the affidavit, everyone randomly stopping going to college... there are so many but Bart takes the cake I guess

Best moment: the Thanksgiving flashbacks from season 1, Dan placing a plastic crown on Blair's head

Freaks and Geeks

This is one of the few shows where high school is depicted realistically. It's not all glitter and parties and not everyone has sex and does drugs. Okay, I admit, the bullying was over the top and it was weird how no adults cared but other than that, it was pretty spot-on. It was emotional without being too dramatic and far-fetched and also had funny moments. Yes some of the characters may have been stereotypes but at least the show seemed self-aware of that. It's truly a shame we only got 18 episodes of this show, while The Secret Life of the American Teenager somehow got five seasons??? I don't get it.

Weirdest moment: when Cindy suddenly got super mean once she started dating Sam

Best moment: Daniel showing up at Kim's doorstep, Sam breaking down in tears in the end of 'Garage Door'

Gilmore Girls

I'm not sure this one counts as a teen drama, maybe it's more of a dramedy but I'm still including it here. It's funny, the dialogue is witty and full of obscure pop-culture references and the relationships between generations complex. Same as with Freaks and Geeks, the portrayal of high school is pretty realistic. Characters are shown studying and taking tests and not just partying all the time. However the show loses points for getting weirdly soapy in the 7th season. The dialogue wasn't as good and the camera angles were soap opera like and the storylines weren't very good either. You could really tell the show changed show-runners. The earlier seasons are the best. It's hard to explain but something about them feels cozy like a warm blanket and a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day.

Weirdest moment: Lorelai marrying Chris and then making the whole "you're the man I want to want" speech, Lorelai defending and loving Dean for no reason

Best moment: Rory's graduation speech, Rory yelling at Chris and calling him out for not having been there for her, Then She Appeared, "Yes Emily, you may go first"... there are so many!

[sothischickshe]

Omggg it only just hit me that GG is about to finish and I’m not gonna know what the fuck to do with myself. What other shows are you watching? Shows you like, shows you like to hate-watch, old shows, new shows. Recommend whatever pleaseeee I need to monkey bar my way out of this gg addiction. (Get your hand on one rung before you let go of the other energy)

hey anon! hope you're doing well <3 and omg i know!! can't believe it...end of an era (though i havent seen the last couple of eps yet haha). love this monkey bar analogy too!!!

ok some ~current shows that i'm watching which i'd rec!!

only connect (uk quiz show)

university challenge (uk quiz show)

tuca and bertie (us animated...comedy? dramedy?)

the good fight (us...dramedy i think? spin off of the good wife)

the chi (us drama...(dy?))

this way up (uk...dramedy, i think?)

undone (us animated/rotoscoped dramedy)

saturday night live (us sketch show)

good omens (us-uk, uh, fantasy comedy?? and there's gonna be a s2?! what does that MEAN?!)

kenan (us comedy)

insecure (us comedy)

his dark materials (us-uk fantasy)

i don't really hatewatch things but i do have a completist vibe so idk i could maybe be compelled to hate watch more american gods? but also im v proud of myself for not folding and watching the latest season so...?!????!

some other shows i'd rec:

fishing with john (us absurdist mockumentary)

community, particularly the first 2 seasons (us comedy)

bojack horseman (us dramedy?)

high maintenance (us trippy comedy i guess?)

kidding (us dramedy)

i may destroy you (uk dramedy)

monkey dust (uk animated gross comedy)

buffy the vampire slayer / angel (us fantasy something?)

the west wing (us political drama i guess?)

the wire (us drama....dy?)

the good wife (us drama...dy?)

young americans (us teen drama i guess? brief dawson's creek spinoff)

the get down (us musical)

crazy ex-girlfriend (us musical)

hip hop: the songs that shook america (uk, i think? documentary)

steven universe (us animated kids show)

black mirror (uk/us satire anthology)

electric dreams (uk-us anthology)

never mind the buzzcocks, the mark lamarr era (uk music quiz show)

fleabag (uk...dramedy?)

chewing gum (uk comedy)

agents of shield, agent carter, cloak and dagger, runaways (us marvel shows)

the misadventures of romesh ranganathan (uk travel show)

glow (us...dramedy?)

orange is the new black (us dramedy)

weeds (us comedy)

peep show (uk comedy)

shrill (us comedy)

another period (us comedy)

spaced (uk comedy)

suburgatory (us comedy)

six feet under (us...dramedy?)

broad city (us comedy)

firefly (us sci fi)

grownish (us comedy, spinoff of blackish)

you’re the worst (us comedy)

star trek the original series & star trek the animated series (us sci fi)

the eric andre show (us absurdist sketch show?)

man seeking woman (us surreal comedy)

the mindy project (us comedy)

cougar town (us comedy)

also if you’re a gg fan, you might enjoy some of these which the mainish cast were in / the creator worked on:

girlfriend’s guide to divorce

parenthood

mad men

graceland

parks and recreation

tru calling

friday night lights

conviction

the new twin peaks series (???)

it’s always sunny in philadelphia

brooklyn nine-nine

franklin & bash

bones

arrested development

scandal

desperate housewives

and also!!!! my tastes are relatively broad (with reasonable depth...?) so if you tell me a bit more about what you like or what you’re looking for, i might be able to tailor the suggestions a bit better! hope that helps anyway & thanks for asking :)

[pastelpressmachine]

Never Have I Ever...seen a show like that. Or have I?

April 27th was the premiere of Never Have I Ever, a teen coming-of-age dramedy, following the experiences and struggles of a Indian-American high school girl named Devi Vishwakumar. It was created by Mindy Kaling (The Office, The Mindy Project, Champions, Late Night) and Lang Fisher (The Mindy Project, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Onion News Network), as an unprecedented series that offered a narrative we hadn’t seen before. I, myself, was excited because I am an Indian-American woman who has navigated deep discomfort and confusion with my identity, both in high school and even today at the age of 25. To have something representing us and enlightening audiences at the same time was incredibly important to me, and it’s what has been at the center of so much of my own education, work, and artistic creations.

I wanted to see something that empowered and gave visibility to young girls of South Asian descent, and a lot of us look to Mindy Kaling to do that. Although she has expressed in an interview that she never saw herself as the voice for South Asian women (and isn’t deeply rooted in South Indian/Hindu culture) and it’s an interesting position to be placed in when her white male counterparts aren’t expected to carry an entire ethnic group/gender’s experience on their back and make sure they execute it well. Unfortunately, though, that is the reality in our time of limited representation.

I am often told to be excited I have Lilly Singh on late night television and Mindy Kaling writing comedy shows and films and Jameela Jamil being so outspoken as a badass feminist. Sometimes, I feel pressured to support them, like I should be grateful more than critical, because I don’t have much to begin with when it comes to seeing myself in the media. But I don’t have to love and support content that comes from someone who shares my ethnicity, simply by default, nor do I think any creator or public figure is above critique. I would never bash these women, but I can express disappointment and disagreement, as a viewer and as a member of the communities they claim to be telling stories of or representing. And they could be representative for many! Some women adore them and praise them, for their own reasons. I don’t always feel that way, for my own reasons too. Maybe this wasn’t supposed to be representative, and Mindy Kaling only made something she wanted to see when she was younger. And if in the roulette of relatability, someone seems to share something with the story or its characters, those viewers defend and praise the show, which is fine, but isn’t the case for me and likely many others who might feel uncomfortable even expressing disappointment or dissatisfaction with the work of someone who is, as mentioned, given this powerful position as the South Asian-American voice in comedic television and film. I know there are a lot of Devis out there, but I don’t think we needed another show jam-packed with so many stereotypes and so little dimension and then felt like we couldn’t critique it because it came from “one of our own”. Since when did desi women decide not to be critical? At least do it in the moments where it’s justified.

What I’m saying is anything condemning me for my review would be unfair. I respect Mindy Kaling. I think she is an authentic writer who knows how to colorfully and humorously depict her experiences. She is a body-positive, generally upbeat public personality. At the same time, I can be critical of how all of her lead and many supporting characters and her writing involve appealing to if not outright chasing a conventionally attractive white male love interest. There are a lot of sassy black women with quippy one-liners, a dumb white goofball or jock, and a stereotypical gay token character in her work, from the nurses in The Mindy Project to the employees at the gym in Champions.  A lot of her jokes are fatphobic or self deprecating, at her expense or other plus-sized people. That pattern and repeated formula, coming from both her, and Hollywood in general, got tiring very quickly, not to mention disappointing in a way that made it hard to see her the same after she did it more than once or twice. I began wondering if she was someone I trusted or admired in creating something that told South Asian stories. Like I said, maybe it’s just her story multiple times. And writing what you know is a basic rule of thumb in screenwriting, so maybe that explains the redundancy.

Nevertheless, I was excited when I first heard of this project. Exactly one year ago, friends began telling me about a tweet that was circulating for open-call casting for a new coming-of-age tale that centered on an Indian-American girl. I’m not an actor, so I didn’t end up filming or submitting an audition, but I did sign up for the email with the audition information (lines for the video submission, characters, etc.). Anyone who knows me knows I care immensely about desi representation and empowering, authentic storytelling. So I looked into it. 

A year later, I had forgotten about that excitement I felt because so much had happened (graduation, career moves, moving across the country, the goddamn pandemic). And then a TikTok ad of a trio of diverse women of colour popped up this past Monday. #NeverHaveIEver was streaming now, and it took a minute for my brain to buffer and realize this was show from that email! The whole thing had been produced fully and was now available to watch. Wow, that had happened so fast and now arrived with such perfect timing. We needed this in quarantine.

I watched episode 1 the day the show aired on Netflix, and I was hopeful and eager (even if I am tired of Riverdalean casting). But I was quickly let down. In a way that angered me as well. I felt embarrassed, like someone just clowned on me. I’ll elaborate, but after seeing most of that first episode, I was put off and hurt. Why did I expect something different, but also why did a South Asian creator say she didn’t ask to be a representative voice and then make something with so many stereotypes under the guise of creating something for women of colour, specifically (but not limited to) those part of the desi diaspora?

I’ll break down each episode (with some spoilers, so be warned) and my thoughts. I honestly decided I hated the whole show after I struggled to get through the pilot. I was so angry that I let myself get excited about seeing something that wasn’t going to be whitewashed or something a white person who maybe talked to a handful of their Indian friends wrote. I live tweeted my commentary over the next two days, as I finished the series, and received DMs from other Indian women who follow me on Instagram, who had varying views — some agreeing with me completely, some saying it wasn’t that bad and to give it a chance. What we all had in common was that we wanted to have dialogue about the show. I was all for it, and I knew I needed to finish the show before I really solidified my thoughts on it. And it wouldn’t be helpful to attack or resent anyone for truly liking the show. I think I was mad because I expected something different and better than what I saw, and though I wasn’t entitled to seeing exactly what I wanted, I was still allowed to be bummed out and irritated about some plot points, dialogue, and characters.

It wasn’t looking too good for more than half the first season, and below I’ve elaborated on some of my disgruntled tweets. I did only watch the show one time through, and it is very likely my perception would change with the whole story arc in mind, but just like with a screening audience, you only get the first time through for genuine reactions. Here are mine:

Before watching, I tweeted: “like a year ago, i was encouraged to submit an audition for devi or her older sister (assuming, Kamala was the older sister) and it’s so crazy to see the thing you didn’t do (i don’t act, a friend just knew i yell about representation a lot) become your top recommendation. v exciting, unprecedented content!”

PILOT

About ten minutes into it, I felt kind of lame for how excited I got because it was cringey some of its acting, unnatural dialogue, and the narrator being a random white man (tennis legend John McEnroe; this is somewhat explained later, I guess, but remains largely out of place). I thought some of the acting/writing was intentionally weird and bad and forced, like a characteristically exaggerated SNL skit, but it was genuinely how characters in the show spoke. I was watching alone, thankfully, because I think would have sank into my seat if my friends saw how hype I had previously gotten and then forced them to watch so embarrassing with me.

Even if most of the cast is pretty far from being a 15 or 16 old high school student (but not as far as most other teen shows), I can appreciate how mindful the casting was in terms of maintaining the integrity of the characters’ ethnic identities. Devi is played by 18-year-old Tamil Canadian actress and newcomer Maitreyi Ramakrishnan. She is an over-achiever who plays the harp and is involved in a handful of (non-athletic) clubs at school. She has only two friends, who are also socially inept nerds and also girls of colour. Fabiola (played by 20-year old Lee Rodriguez) is Afro-Latinx, wears exclusively men’s polos, and loves science and technology. Eleanor (played by 21-year-old Ramona Young) is an East Asian-American aspiring theatre actress, who is as loud and dramatic, as her outfit choices. They are outcasts with distinct interests. You get that pretty clearly.

Paxton Hall-Yoshida (played by 29-year-old Darren Barnet) is Devi’s love interest — a jock who is not the brightest kid in school and ends up repeating the history class he shares with Devi. His friend group has apathetic-stoner-cool guy energy, so you know, all the stereotypes are in order. He is, as predicted, a white passing, traditionally attractive dudebro. But he is also actually part-Japanese, which was a creative decision added to the character after Barnet’s audition, during which Mindy Kaling found out he speaks/is part-Japanese. So, that’s new, but for the most part, the same formula of high school dynamics is there with some try-hard attempts at diversity.

Devi experiences some intense trauma a few months prior to when the story begins, and then in a somewhat unrelated incident, is struck with leg paralysis. That only contributes to her identity as a social pariah, as the unfortunate recipient of ableist jokes. For whatever reason, while checking out Paxton’s hot body, she stands up out of her wheelchair and can walk again. This is weird and never explained. Did Paxton’s sheer attractiveness somehow work its magic and allow her to regain feeling in her legs? Could the writers maybe have explored her disability more and even allowed this to be a story of how she processed trauma/her immobility while being in love and handling high school? That would’ve been a story we have never seen before, something worth exploring and developing. But the paralysis just stops. I would say don’t even bring a disability into this if you don’t know what to do with it and are just trying to throw something interesting into your story. That’s irresponsible writing.

I very quickly assumed, based on the fact that Fabiola’s character deliberately is shown as someone who doesn’t wear makeup, have any interest in girly things, doesn’t know how to acknowledge cute boys, and dresses like a Best Buy employee, that she’s a closeted lesbian, and part of the show will be about her coming out. Lesbians can’t ever look or act like anything else, can they? And the overtly effeminate closeted gay kid, Jonah, whose first lines are literally “omg where’d you get that outfit? I’m gagged”...he becomes the group gay best friend who also is yet to come out...the absolute lack of subtlety and nuance received one of many tense sighs from me.

Kamala (played by Richa Moorjani) is Devi’s beautiful cousin who receives kindness from strangers and double takes from passersby. Originally from India, as indicated by the Bay Area native actress’s endearing endearing accent, Kamala is studying abroad in pursuit of her PhD at Caltech, which is why she stays with Devi and her mother, Nalini (played by Poorna Jagannathan) in their Sherman Oaks home. She is a career driven woman who is not enthused by the idea of her arranged marriage set-up, which requires her to hide her opinions and passions, a very real source of conflict many South Asian women face in their 20’s-30’s if they come from traditional families. Because she’s a secondary character to the plot operating as a foil to her very flawed, younger cousin, you don’t really get to know Kamala beyond her marriage anxiety, being out of touch with American culture and innocently discovering things like teen slang and Riverdale. (I see you, Netflix.) Nalini is an uptight widowed mother who is just as judgmental, protective, and critical as any stereotypical Indian mom. Unfortunately, Nalini or Kamala do not seem to head towards becoming fully established characters until most of the first season is over.

We also have Ben Gross (played by 20-year-old Jaren Lewinson), the obnoxious son of a hotshot celebrity lawyer, who you know, has to be Jewish, and he makes sure that everyone knows these things about him. He is Devi’s nemesis in all things related to compiling a strong Ivy League college application. He gives off the same grumpy vibe Danny from The Mindy Project does towards Mindy’s character, and I am certain he will be caught in a love triangle with Devi and Paxton, in the exact same way Mindy Lahiri finds herself. The ultimate fantasy, based on Mindy Kaling’s work, is to be a dorky brown girl who has two white men pining over her. I understood her hating her hairy arms and wanting to look like a Kardashian because body image is a real thing young women, of any background, work through, but why do we have to have white love interests. Why does that have to repeatedly be depicted as the ideal endgame for brown women? And specifically in Devi’s case, why is so much of her energy and attention going to boys who disrespect and ignore her altogether?

You can have brown love, you can have mixed love with other people of colour, it doesn’t have to be with a white person every single time. Why was the only desi couple’s romance shown also the one that was cut short by death? Mohan’s character was so loving and present and empathetic, and I feel like audiences are robbed repeatedly throughout this show of many more engaging plot points and storylines.

EPISODE 2

I might be severely out of touch with how sex is approached by teens these days, but the casual propositions and immediate meet ups seem like they were just written to move the story along. The writing feels clunky and almost rushed, and when I think of how quickly this show went from casting call to premiere, maybe it was. 

While Devi is freshening up at Paxton’s house, she runs into Paxton’s adoptive sister, Rebecca (played by 17-year-old Lily D. Moore) who has Down syndrome. Paxton is really protective of her and projects his own shame of people finding out he has a sister with a disability onto Devi. He ends up kicking her out of his house when he finds Devi talking to Rebecca. Again, I think the dynamics could’ve been explored differently and more positively. We really didn’t need to see another sexually awkward Asian girl, a white (or white-passing) jock who lacks empathy and obsesses over public image, or someone with Down syndrome who was bullied for it. I was beyond over the tokenizing of random minorities, like they were just sprinkled across the show for diversity points but not developed meaningfully beyond a few scenes in the entire season.

EPISODE 3

I really can’t stand Devi at this point, and it’s wild to me that the most unlikeable character is the lead, and this isn’t like, in a complicated Bojack Horseman kind of way, where his character has layers and the flaws are meant to be noticed and analyzed and criticized. Maybe that happens later with Devi, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to like her and consider her an underdog we’re all rooting for. Hell, high school me would be bullying her if she was acting like this. She has no redeemable qualities, just a list of extracurriculars and good grades. Her mom hasn’t beat her ass and her friends still tolerate her, and I find myself asking, “WHY?” so often. There’s even a scene where Nalini is thinking of selling Mohan’s old motorcycle to their white neighbour (who looks, as Devi describes, a “discount Matthew McConaughey”), and I worry Nalini too will have a white love interest...also, Devi then yells at her and calls her a “a bitch”, and I’m...appalled. Nalini threatens to beat her, but never does. That is so forbidden and disrespectful, and nothing actually happens to Devi. She just doesn’t get snacks when her friends come over that night...WHAT. You wouldn’t have your phone, snacks, or access to friends for an indefinite amount of time if you just called your mom, loudly and publicly, a bitch.

It gets worse. It will, more than once, get worse.

I had to pause after watching a particularly infuriating scene, and tweeted: “the lead is literally a selfish virgin who resents her friends’ happiness, disrespects her grieving mother, is fatphobic, and told a Jewish classmate she wishes the Nazis would kill him...is this comedy? what an ugly, nasty character to put at the forefront of your show.” Two seconds later, when sent to the principal’s office, she cries, “I’m messed up, I’m just a rude teenager who disrespects her mother.” That morsel of self awareness might’ve been the beginning of a redemption arc, but no, she fumbles so many more times.

Speaking of the principal, and also Devi’s therapist, I noticed that the two black women in Devi’s life who hold positions of power in the school or as doctors aiding Devi in her trauma, are reduced to sassy one liners or being critical/judgmental in their tone (not how principals or therapists should be). The way Principal Grubbs (played by Cocoa Brown) and Dr. Ryan (played by Niecy Nash) were written demonstrated a pretty limited perception of black women and how they speak/support/lead. I was pausing and sighing in disappointment so often at this point, I could not sit through an entire 28 minute episode all the way through. I started to feel like every character of colour was done injustice.

EPISODE 4

This is where it picks up for me a little because it dips into Indian culture a little more, with some accuracy. Devi and her family celebrate Ganesh Puja, a Hindu festival celebrating the arrival of the Lord Ganesha to earth. They pray and they eat, as Devi explains simply to Paxton, when he spots her at school after swimming practice. There is, however, another Indian woman at the event with her, you guessed it, white husband named Ron, who Nalini wants Devi to talk to because he is a college prep counselor known to get his clients into Ivy Leagues.

There’s a scene with Devi’s friend, Harish, that I think is really valuable, and again, another plot point worth exploring that might’ve made the show a lot more interesting and positively impactful. They bonded over how much they hated dressing up and going to these types of events, often mocking their own culture. Harish talks about how he’s changed in college, after seeing how deeply invested and proud his Native American roommate was of his own heritage.

Devi says, “I’m gonna be an atheist, who eats cheeseburgers every day with my white boyfriend”, which I know is supposed to be a joke, but it’s...kind of real, in terms of the characters and life Mindy Kaling keeps depicting to audiences. They’re not proud of or invested in their cultures, they do eat American junk food, and they do have white boyfriends. That’s the joke, but it’s not like she’s ever written an alternative to what white people write, either.

Anyways, in their exchange, Harish makes an important point about how it is an identity to hate being Indian and not like all the cultural aspects of it, it’s just a shitty identity. It puts Devi in her place, and I would’ve liked to even see a show where you focus on someone like Harish who has this revelation because of what he experiences in college and who he meets. The whole show could’ve revolved around reconciling your dual-cultures. Like I said, the high school centric stories are tried and tired, and I wish there was more content on how transformative life after high school and before settling into a career can be. We really didn’t need to see someone continue to be ashamed of their culture and have their entire personality revolve around achieving whiteness. Who’s the target audience for this show? Desi girls who hate themselves? Desi girls who should continue to hate themselves?

Even Ron calls Devi out on not having an identity outside of what every other Indian kid applying to college is doing: scoring high on tests and being involved in a bunch of clubs. She doesn’t want her trauma to define her and be reduced to a college essay, which is valid, but there is literally nothing else going on. She is not interesting or kind, so...

I would’ve loved to see someone enjoying their culture and being an example of someone who doesn’t want to pick between being Indian or American, and that’s what the conflict is, not this rejection of the brown part, where they constantly clown on themselves while in pursuit of a Chad, Brad, or Paxton. If your viewership was thousands of 15 year old Indian-American girls, what are you selling them?

I thought this was becoming my favourite episode, but it got tone deaf again. Nalini offers to give the Hindu pandit a ride, and she says it would’ve been wrong not to because the pandit taking an Uber is like “Modi on Postmates”. This is equating a spiritual or religious community leader (what a priest is to Christianity, rabbi to Judaism, for example) to the current Prime Minister of India, who is a notorious Hindu nationalist proposing the genocide of anyone who isn’t Hindu or converts to Hinduism. Whether the writers of this show are pro-Modi or simply didn’t do their research on the figure, it was a massive red flag to hear Nalini say that.

EPISODE 5

Devi continues to not only objectify Paxton but spreads a rumour about having sex with him and then gaslights him when he clocks her for it by telling him it spread indirectly (because she didn’t correct her friends for thinking so) and that he’s being dramatic when he is rightfully upset...? It’s not empowering or the change in representation I want to see when it��s an Indian girl doing what shitty white men often get away with. That’s messed up no matter who does it. And all the while, she lets other girls in her grade worship her for proving that nerdy girls can get with a hot guy out of their league and vilifies Ben for mentioning the rumour, even though if he hadn’t, those girls wouldn’t have known and immediately considered her their hero...so, when her lies serve her, she soaks it up, and when they don’t because the rumour reaches Paxton, she blames others. Devi sucks, man. 

EPISODE 6

Seamless writing! The writers clearly know how to write for an affluent white kid growing up in Los Angeles County. It follows the perspective of Ben Gross, with Andy Samberg narrating. They stuck to what they knew, they wrote what they knew, and it worked. It wasn’t uncomfortable to watch; it explored family dynamics and aspects of Ben’s personality, and it didn’t really delve into what being Jewish is like, but it’s nice to see there weren’t any anti-Semitic quips. (The bar is on the floor, if I’m saying it’s nice there was nothing offensive in this episode.) 

But yeah, it worked, I understood the character more, and he got indicate the possession of some more redemptive traits that made you wonder where he was headed in this story. That can’t really be said for the POC characters. Although Fabiola and Eleanor finally start to get their own storylines...more than halfway through the season.

EPISODE 7

You’ll probably see again at this point how bored I am of stories indicating a girl is gay by her lack of femininity and a boy is gay by indicating his abundance of it. No nuance, no fluidity — queer kids cannot exist in any other fashion or form at Sherman Oaks High School. And yeah, the fat kid is still being used as comic relief. This will happen a couple more times to lift tension from what could’ve been really untampered, sweet, and powerful moments. No, no, we need a few more completely uncalled for jokes made at the expense of the fat, nerdy kid.

EPISODE 8

I love when Fabiola pops off. Although she too becomes yet another half of a mixed couple with a white love interest, she gives Devi an aggressive reality check. It’s important to note that Devi’s lack of social coordination or a bigger group of friends shouldn’t be attributed to her not being a “pretty, thin white girl” or to her being nerdy; she’s genuinely unlikeable because she’s a bad person. She’s selfish and dishonest. I don’t know why Paxton chooses that moment at the party to extend his empathy or if he’s attracted to girls in vulnerable positions because he kisses her specifically after she expresses feeling abandoned by everyone in her life. Maybe he didn’t want to sleep with her because he was developing feelings and he didn’t want her to be another casual hook up, like the hot, vapid popular girls Zoe or Ben’s gold digger girlfriend, Shira. But Paxton contradicts himself so many times in how he treats Devi that it’s hard to tell. If a girl loses her friends for being awful to them, then plays the victim and opts to mention her trauma only in moments where it serves justifying her behaviour, and you choose to find that to be the moment to kiss her, I question your judgment and what exactly you are attracted to.

EPISODE 9

I should say, I do like Steve (played by Eddie Liu), Kamala’s secret boyfriend. He’s funny and endearing and doesn’t want Kamala to pick between her career and her relationship, nor does he want her to feel like she needs to hide who she is or who she loves. But he does feel insecure about her falling for Prashant, an Indian engineer she is expected to get engaged to and who ends up being unexpectedly attractive. She assures him it’s just a formality to appease her parents to meet him, but Steve and Kamala break up anyways, because he breaks into her room and is too frantic and desperate to lose her and proposes out of fear and jealousy. Kamala and Steve would’ve been a more interesting couple to follow (see again, my point about following romance after high school?) because they are both Asian, but different ethnicities. I think they could’ve been a funnier and enticing pair to approach and develop because of Kamala’s student visa status influencing their relationship, how influential their backgrounds or overbearing immigrant parents might be, how Steve handles his insecurities and if Kamala would feel more likely/obligated to fall for Prashant not just out of religion/ethnicity but because they seem to have more in common and she doesn’t feel dishonest or the need to be secretive around him. There were so many components to their relationship and to Kamala herself that I would have liked to see picked apart a little more. And it took the second to last episode to really see her shine, which was a bummer.

This episode does offer a huge turnaround for me, personally, as it finally digs into the relationship Devi has with Nalini. It can actually be pretty triggering for many South Asian kids who feel disconnected from or unloved by one or both of their parents, and despite it reopening a wound of mine alongside Devi’s, I think it was really incredible to see that specific flashback on television, for probably the first time ever.

EPISODE 10

The parts of the show that are the strongest in terms of writing, emotion, and a good balance of drama and comedy occur too little, too late. There were promising moments that made initial criticism of the pilot feel too harsh to judge the whole show off of, but I don’t think I would take back anything I said. I did tear up, during the last 7-ish minutes of the last episode, which is a pretty big deal. And I’m quite pleased with the journey of Devi and Nalini’s relationship, more than anyone else’s, and I think that’s really special and vital to see more than the friendships and romance because it can be so contentious to be an “Americanized” desi growing up in a house ran by an immigrant desi. And that’s often at the heart of any inner conflict second generation Indian kids (and adults) feel.

I took the advice of giving it a chance, and I think there was more room for improvement than there was real entertainment for me, personally. If it gets picked up for a second season, I’m curious to see what developments will be made and if I’ll feel differently than I do now.

I also didn’t want to give the idea that I wouldn’t listen to or respect opposing opinions or receptions of the series. I know it’s gotten more raves than rants, from what I’ve seen, and I might be just the absolute harshest critic, but whatever the case and thoughts on what I’ve shared, I hope my perspective doesn’t sway you from watching the show entirely or from admitting that you liked it. I just hope it brings into consideration some interpretations you might not have considered or been aware of. That’s all a review can do.

[laularlau8]

As Gillian Anderson walked through the lounge of a posh Los Angeles hotel late last fall, I wondered how it was possible that no one pounced on her for an autograph or threw themselves passionately at her feet. The star of Netflix’s Sex Education, The X-Files, and soon The Crown was clad in a bright fuchsia tailored suit and seemed to radiate stardust from her pale pink pores, yet not a single head so much as turned. Instead Anderson quietly settled in beside a fireplace to observe others going about their business: well-heeled guests silently playing a mysterious board game with crystal discs, and a pack of shaggy-chic hounds that darted in and out of the room pursued by their equally rumpled master.

Anderson and I were supposed to be discussing season two of Sex Education, the British teen dramedy that was a surprise hit when Netflix first released it a year ago. She reprises her role as Jean Milburn, a forthright sex therapist and single mom to Otis (Asa Butterfield), who—despite his own bodily anxieties and absolute inexperience—follows in his mother’s sexpert footsteps and offers counseling-for-cash to his fumbling teenage peers. But Netflix had declared so many plot points off-limits, you’d have thought it was a Game of Thrones spin-off rather than a sweetly off-kilter series doused in adolescent horniness and confusion.

“I looked at the list of spoilers—it is basically every single plotline that’s in the entire season!” said Anderson. Suffice it to say that Jean remains the kind of parent who would loudly announce, “I’m so proud that you’re at this stage in your pubescent development.” She continues dispensing advice and embarrassing Otis by overstepping parent-child boundaries whenever possible. She also unabashedly pursues her own pleasure, even as Otis gets to grips (yes, literally) with his sexuality. “Poor Otis!” Anderson sighed empathetically.“I haven’t played many moms,” she said, sifting through a lifetime of roles in her head. Although she has three kids in real life, Anderson noted that  she’s “mostly played women that don’t have children.” Anderson specializes in high-intensity heroines, such as the iconic Agent Dana Scully in the The X-Files, a compelling detective pursuing a serial killer in The Fall, Great Expectations’ Miss Havisham, and All About Eve’s Margo Channing.

Her character in Sex Education is a rare comedic turn, though she approached it with the same desire for unpredictability. Anderson told me last year she wanted Jean “to feel grounded and neurotic at the same time. I wanted her to feel like she had things under control, and yet she might be losing her grip at any time. I wanted her to feel that she really was feeling like she was trying her best, and yet kept making mistakes and saying the wrong thing.”

Anderson has embraced her character’s sexpert status, dubbing herself “Shag Specialist” on Twitter, where she regularly posts playful images of things that look like genitals, hashtagged #YonioftheDay and #PenisoftheDay. She revels in the dilemmas Sex Education writers cook up for the scripts: One of her favorites this season involved a sexual experiment with a stocking stuffer filled with M&M’s. “You know those tubes that you get at Christmastime in your stocking that you can hang on your tree?” she asked in her crisp American voice, which occasionally strays into a British accent because she has lived in the U.K. for years.

Waving distractedly to a man in the distance, Anderson muttered in a hushed voice, “That’s my boyfriend, Peter”—The Crown creator Peter Morgan. The couple have been working together on season four of the series, in which Anderson plays U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher, but she insists there was no nepotism involved in the casting decision. “I’ve heard Pete say that were we not together, I still would have been offered it,” she said. I believe it: Anderson’s forte is exactly that type of steely charisma exuded by Thatcher, which earned her the nickname the “Iron Lady.”

Although she spent a portion of her childhood in the U.K. during the 1970s, Anderson said her family never cared about the queen at all. “I never paid that much attention [to the royals] until I was in a relationship with Pete,” she recalled. Even then, she didn’t immerse herself in the topic until she joined the show and, she said with mock exasperation, “it became a topic of daily conversation!” She dove into research on Thatcher’s life, searching for the key to that impregnable self-belief and drive that gave the Conservative prime minister her towering aura of authority and ability to bulldoze through any opposition.

“It was almost like she came out of the womb with it,” Anderson said. “Just seeing still imagery of her standing next to her father who was an alderman, she’s so self-possessed and she started making speeches back then. She probably watched him write them and absorbed it. But none of that really necessarily explains the particular power she had—how determined she was. She really believed that she had the answers.” Anderson ascribes that in part to Thatcher’s religious upbringing as a Methodist: “There were certain ways of doing things, and if you stick to the right behavior and right mind and right action then there are good results at the end of it. She felt like she could whip the country into shape in the same way that she could whip a household into shape.”

The Crown spent its first few seasons dramatizing Queen Elizabeth’s halting journey toward embracing her own power. She grew into her role in part thanks to the counsel and encouragement of past prime ministers like Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson. So it will be interesting to watch her more frictional relationship with Thatcher play out onscreen next season. Anderson said that while Elizabeth II and Thatcher were of a similar age, “their differences were such that you could understand why they would rub against each other.… They were the antithesis of each other.”

Anderson is fascinated by the way Thatcher came into her own later in life. Her own options seem to be similarly expanding as she grows older. She spent years adapting an Elizabeth Rosner novel into a screenplay but ended up putting the project aside because she was being offered constant acting work. “I haven’t been brave enough to create that time,” she said, “because there have been too many other tantalizing things.”

Her first big role as Agent Scully 26 years ago plunged Anderson into the maelstrom of celebrity sex objecthood—something that made her uncomfortable at the time. She said she feels much more comfortable in her skin these days. “Back then I never really quite understood what people were referring to, especially [with] Scully,” she said, letting out a throaty laugh when I stared at her disbelievingly. “I’m sure it had a lot to do with my own self-esteem or lack thereof at the time. But I can definitely own it now, in a fun way. Almost like, Really? Okay.” She paused to take a sip of tea and smiled. “I have fun with that because it won’t last forever.”

[michaelandy101-blog]

The Top 25 Movies About Social Media to Add to Your Watch List

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/the-top-25-movies-about-social-media-to-add-to-your-watch-list/

The Top 25 Movies About Social Media to Add to Your Watch List

Social media has inspired comedies, dystopian thrillers, documentaries, and horror movies.

Here is a list of the best movies related to social media, in no particular order.

1. The Social Dilemma, 2020

Documentary

Netflix

A popular movie that can’t be recommended enough.

Even if you’re in the business there are parts of this movie that will still startle.

Featuring interviews with people who invented a variety of the algorithms.

This movie balances the shock factor of what’s going on behind the scenes of social media with insights into how social media can be improved.

2. Love, Guaranteed, 2020

Romantic Comedy

Netflix

Stars Rachael Leigh Cook, Damon Wayans Jr., Heather Graham, Kandyse McClure (Dualla on Battlestar Galactica).

Social media is defined as a social network, and what kind of network is more social than a dating app?

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This romantic comedy follows an attorney and her client who claims that a dating site guarantees love is offering a false promise.

As evidence, he offers himself, who has engaged in a thousand dates and failed to find love.

3. The Hater, 2020

Thriller

Netflix

This is a great movie that you might never have heard of but should definitely check out.

It’s a fast-paced thriller and drama about using social media to settle personal scores.

The hero of the movie is both likable and worthy of loathing.

Don’t be put off by the fact that this is a Polish movie and you might have to read subtitles.

This movie tells a story of harnessing the power of social media like a weapon against those who may or may not deserve it.

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It’s highly relevant in today’s world of disinformation amplification yet it’s not really about social media in the same way that a movie like Taxi Driver is not about guns.

Both movies, Taxi Driver and The Hater, share a theme of the misfit trying to fit in and not really able to find a way in until circumstances create an opportunity.

4. Emily in Paris, 2020

Comedy-drama

Netflix

I cheated.

This isn’t a movie.

But so many who have an interest in social media marketing and movies will find this so interesting that I had to fit it in.

The central character – Emily (duh!), is a social media marketer from Chicago who is sent to a Paris office where she’s met with skepticism.

She changes her Instagram handle to @emilyinparis and starts posting photos, her account goes viral.

The series is from the mind of Darren Star, the writer behind such hits as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and Sex and the City.

If any of those are your favorites then it’s likely you’ll enjoy Emily in Paris as well.

There’s a bit of suspension of disbelief necessary regarding the social media, but Emily in Paris is fundamentally a fantasy not a documentary.

A little fantasy helps to get through these dark and pandemic times.

5. Die Influencers Die, 2020

Horror

Roku

This is a B-Movie slasher exploitation flick about a group of easy-to-hate influencers meeting dreadful ends.

What’s not to like right?

Millions of social media followers are dangled in front of a small group of social media influencers in exchange for spending the night at a reportedly haunted studio in Las Vegas.

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For those who enjoy heavy metal, are annoyed by social media influencers to no end, and harbor a fondness for killer clowns…this movie is for you.

6. Spree, 2020

Social media satire/Horror

Amazon, Vudu

A spree is defined as a sustained period of time during which an unrestrained activity is indulged.

That’s pretty much what this movie is about, a rideshare driver going to the ultimate extreme to achieve Internet fame.

Starring Joe Keery (“Steve” in Stranger Things), Spree is a dark and violent comedy that’s not necessarily for everyone.

7. #realityhigh, 2017

Dramedy

Netflix

This is a teen dramedy about a girl going through the social media popularity rabbit hole and becoming another person to please others.

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8. Hard Candy, 2005

Thriller/Horror/Revenge

Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

This is an under-the-radar movie that might make some uncomfortable.

It stars Ellen Page (Juno, Umbrella Academy), Patrick Wilson (Conjuring, Watchmen, Aquaman), and Sandra Oh (Killing Eve, Grey’s Anatomy, Sideways, Princess Diaries).

The movie won several awards including three at the 2005 Sitges Film Festival (Best Motion Picture, Best Screenplay, and an Audience Award for Best Motion Picture) and four awards at the 2006 Spanish Malaga Film Festival (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Cinematographer).

Ellen Page won Best Actress at the 2006 Austin Film Critics Association Awards.

This is an intelligent suspense and thriller.

But it’s not for the squeamish.

It can get grueling for some.

Ellen Page stars as a 17-year-old teenager who entraps an older man via a chat room.

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Expecting illicit activities the teenager turns the table on him.

Again, I must warn that this movie is not for those with delicate sensibilities.

9. Searching, 2018

Thriller

Amazon, Vudu, YouTube

A movie starring John Cho (Harold & Kumar, Star Trek) in the missing person genre.

The daughter goes missing and police lack leads, so the father takes to the Internet to trace the daughter’s virtual steps to find her.

10. Ingrid Goes West, 2017

Comedy

Hulu

Stars Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza.

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Aubrey Plaza is a great actress who consistently surprises with the quirky nuance she brings to her roles and that’s also the case here.

This film is in the stalker genre but it’s also a satire of the influencer world.

11. The Social Ones, 2020

Comedy

Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

This is a mockumentary and parody of the influencer culture, taking swipes at Instagram stars and fashion bloggers.

12. A Simple Favor, 2018

Comedy/Thriller

Amazon, Hulu, Sling TV, Vudu, YouTube

This is a Paul Feig movie about a video blogger who gets in over her head after she befriends a woman who causes her viewership to soar.

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It’s like a noir because it has a femme fatale.

The mystery and thriller quality of the story kept me watching.

13. Smosh: The Movie, 2015

Comedy

Amazon, iTunes, Vudu

Satire of YouTube stars starring two actual YouTube stars.

Directed by Alex Winter, star of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

14. Friend Request, 2016

Social media mystery/Horror

Amazon, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube

A woman accepts a friend request whose mysterious death sets off a series of deaths of those who are friends with the woman.

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15. Unfriended, 2015

Social media horror

Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Vudu

Instead of a group of young people at a camp getting murdered, it’s people on a group chat that are meeting their demise one by one.

16. The Assistant, 2019

Comedy/Satire

Amazon

Short film 13 Minutes, available on Amazon Prime.

Comedy/satire of being an assistant to a social media influencer.

17. The Circle, 2017

Thriller

Amazon, YouTube, Vudu, iTunes

Starring Emma Watson, John Boyega, Bill Paxton, and Tom Hanks.

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This is a cautionary tale of living life on social media based on Dave Egger’s novel.

18. Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, 2016

Documentary

YouTube

A documentary that explores how the Internet affects society today and may affect it tomorrow.

It asks probing questions like “will our great, great-grandchildren grow up in a world where they have no need for human companionship?”

Werner Herzog is a consistently thought-provoking filmmaker.

19. The Great Hack, 2019

Documentary

Netflix

A chilling documentary about not just about Cambridge Analytica but about the surveillance Internet.

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20. The Social Network, 2010

Drama

Netflix

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, this movie is based on the story of how Mark Zuckerburg came to found Facebook.

Highly acclaimed and a must-watch movie.

21. American Meme, 2018

Documentary

Netflix

Featuring Paris Hilton and DJ Khaled, it’s a behind the scenes look at what it means to be a social media star and the conflicts between the reality and what’s presented.

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22. Disconnect, 2012

Drama/Thriller

Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

Starring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Alexander Skarsgård, Frank Grillo.

Three stories interweaved around human interaction via social media.

Lives are changed, conflicts arise, some characters face a reckoning.

All of the actors are top shelf, including a strong performance by Frank Grillo – a character actor who’s been in dozens of popular films including Mambo Kings, Minority Report, Zero Dark Thirty, and several of the recent Marvel superhero movies.

23. Catfish, 2010

Documentary

Netflix

Documentary and indie film of two brothers who strike up a relationship with a woman over Facebook, with both sides misrepresenting who they are and their motives.

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The movie is the origin of the term Catfishing, which is the practice of pretending to be someone you are not – like pretending to be an associate of a famous person over the Internet in order to woo someone.

24. Chef, 2014

Comedy-drama

Amazon (free), iTunes, Pluto (free), Vudu, YouTube

Starring Jon Favreau, Scarlett Johansson, John Leguizamo, Sofía Vergara, Robert Downey Jr.

This is a feel-good dramedy.

A chef gets a bad review over Twitter and he responds in kind.

The Twitter argument goes viral and results in unanticipated events in his personal and business life.

It’s partially about the transformative effect that social media can have on a life.

25. You, 2018

Dramedy/Thriller

Netflix TV Series

This is not a movie.

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Again, I cheated.

Yet it deserves to be included in a list of things to watch and chill.

The show is absolutely binge-bait, it grabs you from the beginning and you hang on tight as the story takes unexpected twists and turns.

Without spoiling anything, the series is about a smart likable guy who meets a cute college student who is between relationships.

What seems like a romantic comedy turns into something else entirely.

An enjoyable series, well worth a try.

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[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 10/13/20: FREAKY, THE CLIMB, MANK, HILLBILLY ELEGY, AMMONITE, DREAMLAND, DOC-NYC and MUCH MORE!

It’s a pretty crazy week for new releases as I mentioned a few times over the past couple weeks, but it’s bound to happen as we get closer to the holiday movie season, which this year won’t include many movies in theaters, even though movie theaters are still open in many areas of the country… and closing in others. Sigh. Besides a few high-profile Netflix theatrical release, we also get movies starring Vince Vaughn, Margot Robbie, Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Mel Gibson and more offerings. In fact, I’ve somehow managed to write 12 (!!!!) reviews this week… yikes.

Before we get to the new movies, let’s look at a few series/festivals starting this week, including the always great documentary festival, DOC-NYC, which runs from November 11 through 19. A few of the docs I’ve already seen are (probably not surprisingly, if you know me) some of the music docs in the “Sonic Cinema” section, including Oliver Murray’s Ronnie’s, a film about legendary jazz musician and tenor sax player Ronnie Scott, whose London club Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club has been one of the central cores for British jazz fans for many decades.

Alex Winter’s Zappa is a much more satisfying portrait of the avant-garde rocker than the doc Frank Zappa: In His Own Words from a few years back, but I was even more surprised by how much I enjoyed Julien Temple’s Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan, because I’ve never really been a Pogues fan, but it’s highly entertaining as we learn about the chronically-soused frontman of the popular Irish band.

I haven’t seen Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete’s in My Own Time: A Portrait of Karen Dalton, a portrait of the blues and folk singer, yet, nor have I watched Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider’s Los Hermanos/The Brothers about two brother musicians separated from childhood after leaving their native Cuba, but I’ll try to get to both of them soon enough.

Outside of the realm of music docs is Ilinca Calugareanu’s A Cops and Robbers Story, which follows Corey Pegues from being a drug dealer and gang member to a celebrated deputy inspector within the NYPD. There’s also Nancy (The Loving Story) Buirski’s A Crime on the Bayou, the third part of the filmmaker’s trilogy about brave individuals in the Civil Rights era, this one about 19-year-old New Orleans fisherman Gary Duncan who tries to break up a fight between white and black teens at an integrated school and is arrested for assaulting a minor when merely touching a white boy’s arm.

Hao Wu’s 76 Days covers the length of Wuhan, China’s lockdown due to COVID-19, a very timely doc that will be released by MTV Documentary Films via virtual cinema on December 4. It’s one of DOC-NYC’s features on its annual Short List, which includes Boys State, Collective, The Fight, On the Record, and ten others that will vie for juried categories.

IFC Films’ Dear Santa, the new film from Dana Nachman, director of the wonderful Pick of the Litter, will follow its Heartland Film Festival debut with a run at COD-NYC before its own December 4 release. The latter is about the USPS’s “Operation Santa” program that receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa every year and employees thousands of volunteers to help make the wishes of these kids come true.

Basically, there’s a LOT of stuff to see at DOC-NYC, and while most of the movies haven’t been released publicly outside festivals yet, a lot of these movies will be part of the doc conversations of 2020. DOC-NYC gives the chance for people across the United States to see a lot of great docs months before anyone else, so take advantage of some of their ticket packs to save some money over the normal $12 per ticket price. The $199 price for an All Access Film Pass also isn’t a bad deal if you have enough time to watch the hundreds of DOC-NYC offerings. (Sadly, I never do, yet I’m still a little bummed to miss the 10Am press screenings at IFC Center that keeps me off the streets… or in this case, sitting on my ass at home.)

Not to be outdone by the presence of DOC-NYC, Film at Lincoln Center is kicking off its OWN seventh annual “Art of the Real” doc series, which has a bit of overlap by running from November 13 to 26. I really don’t know a lot about the documentaries being shown as part of this program, presented with Mubi and The New York Times, but check this out. For just 50 bucks, you can get an all-access pass to all 17 films, which you can casually watch at home over the two weeks of the fest.

Okay, let’s get to some theatrical releases, and the one I’ve been anticipating the most (also the one getting the widest release) is Christopher Landon’s FREAKY from Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. It stars Kathryn Newton as Millie Kessler, a high school outcast who is constantly picked on, but one night, she ends up encountering the serial killer known as the “Blissfield Butcher” (Vince Vaughn), but instead of dying when she’s stabbed with a ritual blade. The next morning Millie and the Butcher wake up to discover that they’ve been transported into the body of the other. Oh, it’s Friday the 13th… oh, now I get it… Freaky Friday!

Landon is best known for writing many of the Paranormal Activity sequels and directing Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. Msore importantly, he directed Happy Death Day and its sequel Happy Death Day 2 U, two of my favorite Blumhouse movies, because they so successfully mix horror with comedy, which is so hard to do. That’s what Freaky is all about, too, and it’s even harder this time even though Freaky has way more gruesome and gory kills than anything in Landon’s other films. Heck, many of the kills are gorier than the most recent Halloween from Blumhouse, and it’s a little shocking when you’re laughing so hard at times.

Landon does some clever things with what’s essentially a one-joke premise of a killer in a teen girl’s body and vice versa, but like the Lindsay Lohan-Jamie Lee Curtis remake from 2003, it’s all about the talent of the two main actors to pull off the rather intricate nature of playing humor without losing the seriousness of the horror element.

It may not be too surprising with Vaughn, who made a ton of dramas and thrillers before turning to comedy. (Does everyone remember that he played Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho and also starred in thrillers The Cell and Domestic Disturbance?) Newton is a bit more of an unknown quantity, but as soon as Tillie dawns the red leather jacket, you know that she can use her newly found homicidal attitude to get some revenge on those who have been terrible to her.

In some ways, the comedy aspects of Freaky win out over the horror but no horror fan will be disappointed by the amount of gory kills and how well the laughs emerge from a decent horror flick. Freaky seems like the kind of movie that Wes Craven would have loved.

I’m delighted to say that this week’s “Featured Flick” is Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin’s indie comedy THE CLIMB (Sony Pictures Classics), a movie that I have seen no less than three times this year, first when it was playing Sundance, a few months later when it was supposed to open in March… and then again last week! And you know what? I enjoyed it just as much every single time. It’s an amazing two-hander that stars Covino and Marvin as best friends Mike and Kyle, who have a falling out over the former sleeping with the latter’s fiancé, and it just gets funnier and funnier as the friends fight and Kyle gets engaged to Marisa (Gayle Rankin from GLOW) who hates Mike. Can this friendship possibly survive?

I really had no idea what to expect the first time I saw The Climb at the Sony Screening Room, but it was obviously going to be a very different movie for Sony Pictures Classics, who had started out the year with so many great films before theaters shut down. (Unfortunately, they may have waited too long on this one as theaters seem to be shutting down again even while NYC and L.A. have yet to reopen them. Still, I think this would be just as much fun in a drive-in.)

The movie starts with a long, extended scene of the two leads riding bikes on a steep mountain in France, talking to each other as Kyle (once the athlete of the duo) has fallen out of shape. During the conversation, Mike admits to having slept with Kyle’s fiancé Ava (Judith Godréche) and things turn hostile between the two. We then get the first big jump in time as we’re now at the funeral for Ava, who actually had been married to Mike. Kyle eventually moves on and begins a relationship with his high school sweetheart Marisa, who we meet at the Thanksgiving gathering for Kyle’s extended family. In both these cases, we see how the relationship between Mike and Kyle has changed/evolved as Mike has now fallen on hard times.

It's a little hard to explain why what’s essentially a “slice of life” movie can be so funny. On one hand, The Climb might be the type of movie we might see from Mike Leigh, but Covino and Marvin find a way to make everything funny and also quite eccentric in terms of how some of the segments begin and end.  Technically, it’s also an impressive feat with the number of amazing single shot sequences and how smooth some of the transitions work. It’s actually interesting to see when and how the filmmakers decide to return to the lives of their subjects – think of it a bit like Michael Apted’s “Up” series of docs but covering a lot shorter span in time.

Most importantly, The Climb has such a unique tone and feel to other indie dramedies we’ve seen, as the duo seem to be influenced more by European cinema than American indies. Personally, I think a better title for The Climb might have been “Frenemied,” but even with the movie’s fairly innocuous title, you will not forget the experience watching this entertaining film anytime soon.

Maybe this should be called “Netflix week,” because the streamer is releasing a number of high-profile movies into theaters and on the streaming service. Definitely one of the more anticipated movies of the year is David Fincher’s MANK, which will get a theatrical release this week and then stream on Netflix starting December 4.

It stars Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the Hollywood screenwriter who has allowed himself to succumb to alcoholism but has been hired by Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to write his next movie, Citizen Kane, working with a personal secretary Rita Alexander (played by Lily Collins). His story is told through his interactions with media mogul William Hearst (Charles Dance) and relationship with actress and Hearst ingenue and mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried).

It I were asked to pick one director who is my absolute favorite, Fincher would probably be in my top 5 because he’s had such an illustrious and varied career of movie styles, and Mank continues that tradition as Fincher pays tribute to old Hollywood and specifically the work of Orson Welles in every frame of this biopic that’s actually more about the troubled writer of Citizen Kane who was able to absorb everything happening in his own Hollywood circles and apply them to the script.

More than anything, Mank feels like a movie for people who love old Hollywood and inside Hollywood stories, and maybe even those who may already know about the making of Welles’ highly-regarded film might find a few new things to appreciate. I particularly enjoyed Mankiewicz’s relationships with the women around him, including his wife “Poor Sarah,” played by Tuppence Middleton, Collins’ Rita, and of course, Seyfried’s absolutely radiant performance as Davies.  Maybe I would have appreciated the line-up of known names and characters like studio head Louis B Mayer and others, if more of them had any sort of effect on the story and weren’t just

The film perfectly captures the dynamic of the time and place as Mank is frequently the only honest voice in a sea of brown nosers and yes-men. Maybe I would have enjoyed Oldman’s performance more if everything that comes out of Mankiewicz’s mouth wasn’t an all-too-clever quip.

The film really hits a high point after a friend of Mank’s commits suicide and how that adds to the writer’s woes about not being able to save him. The film’s last act involves Mank dealing with the repercussions after the word gets out that Citizen Kane is indeed about Hearst.

Overall, Mank is a movie that’s hard to really dig into, and like some of Fincher’s previous work, it tends to be devoid of emotion. Even Fincher’s decision to be clever by including cigarette burns to represent Mank’s “reels” – something explained by Brad Pitt in Fight Club – just drives home the point that Mank is deliberately Fincher’s most meta movie to date.

You can also read my technical/crafts review of Mank over at Below the Line.

Ron Howard’s adaptation of JD Vance’s bestselling memoir HILLBILLY ELEGY will be released by Netflix into theaters ahead of its streaming debut on November 24. It stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close, but in honesty, it’s about JD Vance, you know, the guy who wrote the memoir.  The film follows his younger years (as played by Owen Asztalos) while dealing with a dysfunctional white trash family in Middletown, Ohio, dealing with his headstrong Mamaw (Close) and abusive mother dealing with drug addiction (Adams).  Later in life, while studying at Yale (and played by Gabriel Basso), he has to return to his Ohio roots to deal with his mother’s growing addiction that forces him to come to terms with his past.

I’m a bit of a Ron Howard stan – some might even say “an apologist” – and there’s no denying that Hillbilly Elegy puts him the closest to A Beautiful Mind territory than he’s been in quite some time. That doesn’t mean that this movie is perfect, nor that I would consider it one of his better movies, though. I went into the movie not knowing a thing about JD Vance or his memoir but after the first reviews came out, I was a little shocked how many of them immediately went political, because there’s absolutely nothing resembling politics in the film.

It is essentially an adaptation of a memoir, dealing with JD Vance’s childhood but then also the past that led his mother and grandmother down the paths that made his family so dysfunctional. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between the older Vance and his future wife Usha (as played by Freida Pinto) earlier in their relationship as they’re both going to Yale and Vance is trying to move past his family history to succeed in the realm of law.

It might be a no-brainer why Adams and Close are being given so much of the attention for their performances. They are two of the best. Close is particularly amusing as the cantankerous Mamaw, who veers between cussing and crying, but also has some great scenes both with Adams and the younger Vance. The amazing special make-up FX used to change her appearance often makes you forget you’re watching Close. I wish I could say the same for Adams, who gives such an overwrought and over-the-top performance that it’s very hard to feel much emotionally for her character as she goes down a seemingly endless vortex of drug addiction. It’s a performance that leads to some absolute craziness. (It’s also odd seeing Adams in basically the Christian Bale role in The Fighter, although Basso should get more credit about what he brings out in their scenes together.)

Hillbilly Elegy does have a number of duller moments, and I’m not quite sure anyone not already a fan of Vance’s book would really have much interest in these characters. I certainly have had issues with movies about people some may consider “Southern White Trash,” but it’s something I’ve worked on myself to overcome. It’s actually quite respectable for a movie to try to show characters outside the normal circles of those who tend to write reviews, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie might be able to connect with people in rural areas that rarely get to see themselves on screen.

Hillbilly Elegy has its issues, but it feels like a successful adaptation of a novel that may have been difficult to keep an audience invested in with all its flashbacks and jumps in time.

Netflix is also streaming the Italian drama THE LIFE AHEAD, directed by Edoardo Ponti, starring Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren, who happens to also be the filmmaker’s mother. She plays Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor in Italy who takes a stubborn young street kid named Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), much to both their chagrin.

I’ll be shocked if Italy doesn’t submit Ponti’s film as their choice for the Oscar’s International Film category, because it has all of the elements that would appeal to Oscar voters. In that sense, I also found it to be quite traditional and formulaic.  Loren is quite amazing, as to be expected, and I was just as impressed with young Ibrahima Gueye who seems to be able to hold his own in what’s apparently his first movie. There’s others in the cast that also add to the experience including a trans hooker named Lola, but it’s really the relationship between the two main characters that keeps you invested in the movie. I only wish I didn’t spend much of the movie feeling like I knew exactly where it’s going in terms of Rosa doing something to save the young boy and giving him a chance at a good life.

I hate to be cynical, but at times, this is so by the books, as if Ponti watched every Oscar movie and made one that had all the right elements to appeal to Oscar voters and wokesters alike. That aside, it does such a good job tugging at heartstrings that you might forgive how obviously formulaic it is.

Netflix is also premiering the fourth season of The Crown this week, starring Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth and bringing on board Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher, Emma Corin, Helena Bonham Carter, Tobis Menzies, Marion Bailey and Charles Dancer. Quite a week for the streamer, indeed.

Another movie that may be in the conversation for Awards season is AMMONITE (NEON), the new film from Francis Lee (God’s Own Country), a drama set in 1840s England where Kate Winslet plays Mary Anning, a fossil hunter,  tasked to look after melancholic young bride, Charlotte Murcheson (Saoirse Ronan), sent to the sea to get better only for them to get into a far more intimate relationship.

I had been looking forward to this film, having heard almost unanimous raves from out of Toronto a few months back. Maybe my expectations were too high, because while this is a well-made film with two strong actors, it’s also rather dreary and not something I necessarily would watch for pleasure. The comparisons to last year’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (also released by NEON) are so spot-on that it’s almost impossible to watch this movie without knowing exactly where it’s going from the very minute that the two main characters meet.

Winslet isn’t bad in another glammed-down role where she can be particularly cantankerous, but knowing that the film would eventually take a sapphic turn made it somewhat predictable. Ronan seems to be playing her first outright adult role ever, and it’s a little strange to see her all grown-up after playing a teenager in so many movies.

The movie is just so contained to the one setting right up until the last 20 minutes when it actually lives the Lyme setting and lets us see the world outside Mary’s secluded lifestyle.  As much as I wanted to love Ammonite, it just comes off as so obvious and predictable – and certainly not helped by coming out so soon after Portrait of a Lady. There’s also something about Ammonite that just feels so drab and dreary and not something I’d necessarily need to sit through a second time.

The animated film WOLFWALKERS (GKIds) is the latest from Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, directors of the Oscar-nominated Secret of the Kells (Moore’s Song of the Sea also received an Oscar nomination a few years later.) It’s about a young Irish girl named Robyn (voiced Honor Kneafsey) who is learning to be hunter from her father (voiced by Sean Bean) to help him wipe out the last wolf pack. Roby then meets another girl (voiced by Eva Whittaker) who is part of a tribe rumored to transform into wolves by night.

I have to be honest that by the time I got around to start watching this, I was really burnt out and not in any mood to watch what I considered to look like a kiddie movie. It looks nice, but I’m sure I’d be able to enjoy it more in a different head (like watching first thing on a Saturday morning).

Regardless, Wolfwalkers will be in theaters nationwide this Friday and over the weekend via Fathom Events as well as get full theatrical runs at drive-ins sponsored by the Landmark, Angelika and L.A.’s Vineland before it debuts on Apple TV+ on December 11. Maybe I’ll write a proper review for that column. You can get tickets for the Fathom Events at  WolfwalkersMovie.com.

Next up is Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s DREAMLAND (Paramount), starring Margot Robbie as Allison Wells, a bank-robbing criminal on the loose who encounters young man named Eugene Evans (Finn Cole) in rural Dust Bowl era North Dakota and convinces him to hide her and help her escape the authorities by taking her to Mexico.

Another movie where I wasn’t expecting much, more due to the generic title and genre than anything else, but it’s a pretty basic story of a young man in a small town who dreams of leaving and also glamorizes the crime stories he read in pulps. Because of the Great Depression in the late ’20, the crime wave was spreading out across the land and affecting everyone, even in more remote locations like the one at the center of Dreamland.

The sad truth is that there have been so many better movies about this era, including Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde, Lawless and many others. Because of that, this might not be bad but it’s definitely trying to follow movies that leave quite a long shadow. The innocent relationship between Eugene and Allison does add another level to the typical gangster story, but maybe that isn’t enough for Dreamland to really get past the fact that the romantic part of their relationship isn’t particularly believable.

As much as this might have been fine as a two-hander, you two have Travis Fimmel as Eugene’s stepfather and another generic white guy in Garrett Hedlund playing Allison’s Clyde Barrow-like partner in crime in the flashbacks. Cole has enough trouble keeping on pace with Robbie but then you have Fimmel, who was just grossly miscast. The film’s score ended up being so overpowering and annoying I wasn’t even remotely surprised when I saw that Joris-Peyrafitte is credited with co-writing the film’s score.

Dreamland is fine, though it really needed to have a stronger and more original vision to stand out. It’s another classic case of an actor being far better than the material she’s been given. This is being given a very limited theatrical release before being on digital next Tuesday.

This might have been Netflix week, but maybe it could have been “Saban Films Week,” since the distributor also has three new movies. Actually, only two, because I screwed up, and I missed the fact that André Øvredal’s MORTAL was released by Saban Films LAST week. Not entirely my fault because for some reason, I had it opening this week, and I only realized that I was wrong last Wednesday. Oh, well.  It stars Nate Wolff as Eric Bergeland, an American in Norway who seems to have some enigmatic powers, but after killing a young lad, he ends up on the lam with federal agent Christine (Iben Akerlie from Victoria).

This is another movie I really wanted to like since I’ve been such a fan of Øvredal from back to his movie Trollhunter. Certainly the idea of him taking a dark look at superpowers through the lends of Norse mythology should be right up my alley. Even so, this darker and more serious take on superpowers – while it might be something relatively unique and new in movies – it’s something anyone who has read comics has seen many times before and often quite better.

Wolff’s character is deliberately kept a mystery about where he comes from, and all we know is that he survived a fire at his farm, and we watched him kill a young man that’s part of a group of young bullies.  From there, it kind of turns into a procedural as the authorities and Akerlie’s character tries to find out where Eric came from and got his powers. It’s not necessarily a slow or talkie movie, because there are some impressive set pieces for sure, but it definitely feels more like Autopsy of Jane Doe than Trollhunters. Maybe my biggest is that this is a relatively drab and lifeless performance by Wolff, who I’ve seen be better in other films.

Despite my issues, it doesn’t lessen my feelings about Øvredal as a filmmaker, because there’s good music and use of visual FX -- no surprise if you’ve seen Trollhunters -- but there’s still a really bad underlying feeling that you’re watching a lower budget version of an “X-Men” movie, and not necessarily one of the better ones.  Despite a decent (and kinda crazy) ending, Mortal never really pays off, and it’s such a slog to get to that ending that people might feel slightly underwhelmed.

Seth Savoy’s ECHO BOOMERS (Saban Films) is a crime thriller based on a “true story if you believe in such things,” starring Patrick Schwarzenegger as Lance, a young art major, who falls in with a group of youths who break into rich people’s homes and trash them, also stealing some of the more valuable items for their leader Mel (Michael Shannon).

There’s a lot about Echo Boomers that’s going to feel familiar if you’ve seen Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring or the heist movie American Animals from a few years back, but even with those similarities, Seth Savoy has a strong cast and vision to make more out of the fairly weak writing than another director might manage. Schwarzenegger, who seems to be pulling in quite a wide range of roles for basically being another generic white actor is only part of a decent ensemble that includes Alex Pettyfer as the group’s ersatz alpha male Ellis and Hayley Law (also great in the recent Spontaneous) as his girlfriend Allie, the only girl taking part in the heists and destruction. Those three actors alone are great, but then you add Shannon just doing typically fantastic work as more of a catalyst than an antagonist.

You can probably expect there will be some dissension in the ranks, especially when the group’s “Fagan” Mel puts Lance in charge of keeping them in line and Allie forms a friendship with Lance. What holds the movie back is the decision to use a very traditional testimonial storytelling style where Lance and Allie narrate the story by relaying what happened to the authorities after their capture obviously. This doesn’t help take away from the general predictability of where the story goes either, because we’ve seen this type of thing going all the way back to The Usual Suspects.

While Echo Boomers might be fairly derivative of far better movies at times, it also has a strong directorial vision and a compelling story that makes up enough for that fact.

In theaters this Friday and then On Demand and Digital on November 24 is Eshom and Ian Nelms’ action-comedy FATMAN (Saban Films/Paramount), starring Mel Gibson as Santa Claus and Walton Goggins as the hired assassin sent to kill him by a spoiled rich boy named  Billy (Chance Hurstfield) who unhappy with the presents he’s being brought for Christmas.

While we seem to be surrounded by high concept movies of all shapes and sizes, you can’t get much more high concept than having Mel Gibson playing a tough and cantankerous* Kris Kringle (*Is this the week’s actual theme?) who is struggling to survive with Mrs. Klaus (played by the wonderful Marianne Jean-Baptiste from In Fabric) when they’re given the opportunity to produce military grade items for the army using his speedy elf workshop. Unbeknownst to the Kringles, the disgruntled hitman who also feels he’s been let down by Santa is on his way to the North Pole to fulfill his assignment.

You’ll probably know whether you’ll like this movie or not since its snarkier comedic tone is introduced almost from the very beginning. This is actually a pretty decent role for Gibson that really plays up to his strengths, and it’s a shame that there wasn’t more to it than just a fairly obvious action movie that leads to a shoot-out. I probably should have enjoyed Goggins more in a full-on villainous role but having been watching a lot of him on CBS’ The Unicorn, it’s kind of hard to adjust to him playing this kind of role.  I did absolutely love Marianne Jean-Baptiste and the warmth she brought to a relatively snarky movie.

I’m not sure if Fatman is the best showing of Eshom and Ian Nelms’ abilities as filmmakers, because they certainly have some, but any chance of being entertaining is tamped down by a feeling the filmmakers are constantly trying to play it safe. Because of this, Fatman has a few fun moments but a generally weak premise that never fully delivers. It would have thrived by being much crazier, but instead, it’s just far too mild.

Malin Åkerman stars in Paul Leyden’s CHICK FIGHT (Quiver Distribution) as Anna, a woman unhappy with her life and inability to survive on the little money she makes at her failing coffee shop. When Anna’s lesbian traffic cop friend Charleen (Dulcé Sloan) takes her to an underground fight club, Anna her trepidation about joining in, because she has never been in a fight in her life.  Learning that her mother has a legacy at the club, Anna agrees to be trained by Alec Baldwin’s always-drunk Murphy in order to take on the challenges of the likes of Bella Thorne’s Olivia.

Another movie where I’m not sure where to begin other than the fact that I’m not sure I’ve seen a movie trying so hard to be fun and funny and failing miserably at both. Listen, I generally love Akerman, and I’m always hoping for her to get stronger material to match her talents, but this tries its best to be edgy without ever really delivering on the most important thing for any comedy: Laughs.  Sure, the filmmakers try their best and even shoehorn a bit of romance for Anna in the form of the ring doctor played by Kevin Connolly from Entourage, but it does little to help distinguish the movie’s identity.

Listen, I’m not going to apologize for being a heterosexual male that finds Bella Thorne to be quite hot when she’s kicking ass in the ring. (I’m presuming that a lot of what we see in her scenes in the ring involves talented stuntwomen, but whoa! If that’s not the case.) Alec Baldwin seems to be in this movie merely as a favor to someone, possibly one of the producers, and when he disappears with no mention midway through the movie, you’re not particularly surprised. Another of trying too hard is having Anna’s father Ed (played by wrestler Kevin Nash) come out as gay and then use his every appearance to talk about his sex acts.  Others in the cast like Fortune Feimster seem to be there mainly for their bulk and believability as fighters.

Ultimately, Chick Fight is a fairly lame and bland girl power movie written, directed and mostly produced by men. I’m not sure why anyone might be expecting more from it than being a poorly-executed comedy lacking laughs.

And yet, that wasn’t the worst movie of the weekend. That would be Andrzej Bartkowiak’s DEAD RECKONING (Shout! Studios). Yes, the Polish cinematographer and filmmaker who once made the amazing Romeo is Bleeding, starring Gary Oldman and Lena Olin, has returned with a movie with the onus of a premise that reads “a thriller inspired by the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.” No, I did not make that up. It mostly takes place in Nantucket, Massachusetts, which I guess is sort of close to Boston, but instead it focuses on the relationship between teens Niko (K.J. Apa) and Tillie (India Eisley), the latter whose parents died in a plane crash that might have been caused by a terrorist. It just so happens that Niko’s brother Marco (Scott Adkins) is an Albanian terrorist. Coincidence? I think not!

Once you get past the most generic title ever, Dead Reckoning is just plain awful. I probably should have known what to expect when the movie opens with Eric “Never Turned Down a Job” Roberts, but also, I strong feel that Scott Adkins, better known for his martial arts skills, is easily one of the worst actors ever to be given lines to say in a movie. And yet, somehow, there are even worse actors in this movie. How is that even possible?

Although this presumed action movie opens with one of three or four fight sequences, we’re soon hanging out on the beach with a bunch of annoying teenagers, including Tillie, who is drowning the sorrow of recently losing her parents by literally drinking constantly in almost every single scene. When she meets the handsome Eastern European Niko, we think there’s some chance of Tillie being saved, but it isn’t meant to be.

Part of what’s so weird is that Dead Reckoning begins in territory familiar to fans of Barkowiak’s movies like Exit Wounds, Cradle 2 the Grave and Maximum Impact but then quickly shifts gears to a soppy teen romance. It’s weird enough to throw you off when at a certain point, it returns to the main plot, which involves Adkins’ terrorist plot and the search by FBI Agent Cantrell (played by James Remar) to find the culprit who killed Tillie’s parents. Oh, the FBI agent is also Tillie’s godfather. Of course, he is.

Beyond the fact that I spent much of the movie wondering what these teens in Nantucket have to do with the opening scene or the overall premise, this is a movie that anything that could be resembling talent or skill in Barkowiak’s filmmaking is long gone. Going past the horrendous writing – at one point, the exasperated and quite xenophobic Cantrell exclaims, “It’s been a nightmare since 9/11... who knows what's next?” -- or the inability of much of the cast to make it seem like anyone involved cares about making a good movie, the film is strangled by a score that wants to remind you it’s a thriller even as you watch people having fun on the beach on a sunny day.

Eventually, it does get back to the action with a fight between Cantrell and Marco… and then Marco gets into a fight with Tillie’s nice aunt nurse Jennifer where she has a surprisingly amount of fighting skills. There’s also Nico’s best friend who is either British or gay or both, but he spends every one of his scenes acting so pretentious and annoying, you kind of hope he’ll be blown up by terrorists. Sadly, you have to wait until the last act before the surfboards are pulled out.  (Incidentally, filmmakers, please don’t call a character in your movie “Marco,” especially if that character’s name is going to be yelled out repeatedly, because it will just lead to someone in the audience to yell out “Polo!” This is Uwe Boll School of Bad Filmmaking 101!)

The point is that the movie is just all over the place yet in a place that’s even remotely watchable. There even was a point when Tillie was watching the video of her parents dying in a car crash for the third or fourth time, and I just started laughing, since it’s such a slipshod scene.

It’s very likely that Dead Reckoning will claim the honor of being the worst movie I’ve seen this year. Really, the only way to have any fun watching this disaster is to play a drinking game where you take a drink every time Eisley’s character takes a drink. Or better yet, just bail on the movie and hit the bottle, because I’m sure whoever funded this piece of crap is.

Opening at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday is Manfred Kirchheimer’s FREE TIME (Grasshopper/Cinema Conservancy), another wonderful doc from one of the kings of old school cinema verité documentary filmmaking, consisting of footage of New York City from 1960 that’s pieced together with a wonderful jazz score. Let me tell you that Kirschheimer’s work is very relaxing to watch and Free Time is no exception. Plus the hour-long movie will premiere in Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema, accompanied by Rudy Burckhardt’s 1953 film Under the Brooklyn Bridge which captures Brooklyn in the ‘50s.

Also opening in Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema Friday is Hong Khaou’s MONSOON (Strand Releasing) starring Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) as Kit, who returns to Ho Chi Minh City for the first time since his family fled after the Vietnam War when he was six. As he tries to make sense of it, he ends in a romance with Parker Sawyers’ American ex-pat and forms a friendship with a local student (Molly Harris). Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to watch this one before finishing up this column but hope to catch soon, because I do like Golding as an actor.

I shared my thoughts on Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARK WORLDS, when it played at TIFF in September, but this weekend, it will debut on Apple TV+.  It’s another interesting and educational science doc from Herr Herzog, this time teaming with the younger Cambridge geoscientist and “volcanologist” to look at the evidence left behind by meteors that have arrived within the earth’s atmosphere, including the races that worship the falling space objects.

Opening at the Metrograph this week (or rather on its website) is Shalini Kantayya’s documentary CODED BIAS, about the widespread bias in facial recognition and the algorithms that affect us all, which debuted Weds night and will be available on a PPV basis and will be available through November 17. The French New Wave anthology Six In Paris will also be available as a ticketed movie ($8 for members/$12 for non-members) through April 13. Starting Thursday as part of the Metrograph’s “Live Screenings” is Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher’s Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists from 1980. Fischler’s earlier doc Frame Up! The imprisonment of Martin Sostre from 1974 will also be available through Thursday night.

Sadly, there are just way too many movies out this week, and some of the ones I just wasn’t able to get to include:

Dating Amber (Samuel Goldwyn) The Giant (Vertical) I Am Greta (Hulu) Dirty God (Dark Star Pictures) Where She Lies (Gravitas Ventures) Maybe Next Year (Wavelength Productions) Come Away (Relativity) Habitual (National Amusements) The Ride (Roadside Attractions, Forest, ESX) Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (Netflix) Transference: A Love Story (1091) Sasquatch Among the Wildmen (Uncork’d) All Joking Aside (Quiver Distribution) Secret Zoo (MPI Medi Group/Capelight Pictures)

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, I think you’re very special and quite good-looking. Feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!