Reviews

This documentary, by the same producers as the recent "Einstein and the Bomb", is a really interesting watch, and I actually learned a bunch of new stuff. As was discussed in the show, we usually consider Neanderthals to be a slur, thinking of them as nothing more than brutish cavemen, but new research shows they were much more complex than originally thought. There's great footage of Shanidar Cave in Kurdistan and the Bruniquel Cave in France, and the facial reconstructions they did based on recovered skeletons was remarkable. I've always found paleontology interesting and am endlessly fascinated by the evolution of mankind, so I definitely recommend giving this doc a watch if you're feeling a little education-minded.

Yes, we've seen a glut of films about corporate products, including Barbie, Tetris, Air Jordans, Cheetos, BlackBerry, and Beanie Babies. Yes, capitalism is exploitative and it's bad that kids are hooked on sugar and yada yada yada. We know the facts, but sometimes it's fun just to laugh out loud, and that's what we did, in small and large bursts, chortles and guffaws, at this movie, the directorial debut from Jerry Seinfeld.

I went into the movie with low expectations after reading mostly overwrought critics bemoaning its awfulness. It far surpassed my expectations, using tired tropes from all kinds of movies to good effect and it's silly and corny and totally fun. I don't want to give too much away, but i'm a big "Mad Men" fan so was delighted at that scene. The cavalcade of guest stars made the movie and the parallels with NASA and the space race in the 60s were clever, as was the mascots union and January 6th reference (complete with guy with horns). But beware: I finished with a craving for Pop-Tarts, and so I now have a box of Pop-Tarts in my pantry for the first time in 20 years (and yes, that's probably exactly what they wanted to happen).

It's being called Netflix's "buzziest show" of 2024 so far, and after seeing lots of articles and posts about it, we finally tuned in and finished the seven episodes in a few days. I've been thinking about it ever since.

It's a brilliant series about two damaged people dealing with trauma whose lives intersect in unexpected and grotesque ways, but also one that raises questions for me. I'm uncertain as to how deftly it toed the line between a personal narrative and a true crime series. He supposedly went to great lengths to anonymize the characters, but internet sleuths tracked her down and now her name is out there. Yes, she's mentally unwell, but I can't help but feel some pity for her, which is perhaps what got the main character into his mess in the first place. As he said, it all started with an offer of a cup of tea.

Regardless of any nitpicking or unanswered questions, it's a well-written, well acted, emotionally draining, and oft uncomfortable show to watch. I highly recommend it.

Are you watching the new season of this show? If not, you're missing one of the best comedies out there. Based on a friend's suggestion, we flew through the first two seasons last year and absolutely loved it. I wasn't sure they needed another go at it after the neat and tidy ending in S02, but as I should've expected, one can never get enough of the inestimable Jean Smart, who was always my favorite "Designing Women" alum, and who is at the top of her game here. We've watched the two episodes of S03 available so far, and it's better than ever. It's so funny and well-written, the dynamic between the two leads is great, the supporting cast is terrific, and I'm much less annoyed with the Ava character than in the first two seasons. I definitely recommend checking this out or adding it to your (probably) voluminous queue.

I'm a sucker for just about any health-related documentary and this one was no different. The talking heads are knowledgeable and the host, Giulia Enders, is positively delightful. The heavy use of animations was (mostly) cute and effective. I've been kinda obsessed with gut health for a while, so it was nice to know I'm on the right track. We eat lots of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts and usually have stuff like yogurt, kimchi, natto, kefir, and a few other fantastic fermented foods in our fridge.

The title is probably too cutesy as there's nothing really to "hack" about gut health. The knowledge is out there: plentiful water and sleep; less sugar in your diet and no sugary sodas; eat less fast food; and reduce intake of highly-processed foods and anything that comes from a box with a list of unpronounceable ingredients. We'd all do better if we heed Michael Pollan and not "eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize" and to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I know that proscription sounds easy, but at least have some sauerkraut!

I can't believe these words are about to come out of my mouth (or from the ends of my fingertips), but this Paris Hilton documentary is actually great. It's truly mesmerizing and well worth your time, and yes, I know, pass the smelling salts and get thee to the fainting couch.

I've never been a big fan of hers, but I also wasn't that bothered by her antics. I watched "The Simple Life" back in the early aughts and was entertained. She then popped back on my radar after we watched the Netflix docuseries "The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping", in which she appeared and then again when she testified in Sacramento a few weeks ago about her experience. That led to this documentary, which is an imperfect, though sincere and vulnerable portrait where she goes into more detail about her harrowing experience as a victim of the troubled teen industry. I have more sympathy for her and what she went through and while it might be hard for an heiress to change her image (leopard, spots), I think she's definitely not the worst person alive. There are so many more worthy contenders for that title.

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on someone who looks at a life like Shirley Chisholm's and has to choose just enough for a two-hour biopic. But this Netflix film, produced by Regina King and written and directed by John Ridley (whose Oscar-winning "12 Years a Slave" was phenomenal), is a bit lackluster. I don't think it uses the best cross-section of an amazing life, with just the Wikipedia entry alone presenting so much possible material for a biopic.

Regina King is excellent in the title role and the movie is well-intentioned but ultimately lacking in what made her so memorable, focusing solely on her 1972 presidential run with nothing about her work on the ERA or even how she first made it to Congress. The script feels like it takes her quotations and builds a movie around them; you can almost see the pullquote on the screen. Her famous tagline "unbought and unbossed" went unmentioned and unexplored in the entire movie, aside from one sign in the background of a scene. I'd still recommend watching this serviceable film, but keep your expectations in check.

To write my thoughts about this new Netflix series risks suffering the wrath of several friends who are huge fans of the original sci-fi novels. But alas, I love to share even if no one cares.

I had such high hopes for this show and wanted to love it, but ultimately, I was pretty disappointed. I've not read the books, so can't attest to how faithful it is, but it felt like huge chunks were missing and I was forever trying to figure out WTH was going on. It's really uneven and not very engagingly written, and while the CGI is excellent and the cast ridiculously attractive (for physicists!), the pacing is slow and undetermined. The science was really interesting and I was constantly looking stuff up on Wikipedia, but by the end, I was more frustrated than anything else and will have to wait until the next season for more (perhaps).

Because there's so much content out there and I'll never get through everything I want to see in my lifetime, to help me decide, I often segue from one actor, director, or theme to another. Mike Nichols was the bridge this past weekend for Super Saturday Cinema since I watched "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" recently and have seen "Closer", "Charlie Wilson's War", and "Postcards from the Edge" in the past few years.

. This is a movie of its time, still entertaining but also allowing for a bit of anthropological thinking about the 80s. There are many good elements that have survived the test of time (35 years!), including an excellent cast, a good story, a great director, and omigod, the hair! If anyone wonders whether women really wore their hair like that, they only need to look at my 1988 high dchool yearbook where every senior girl worth her salt had her hair Aqua-Netted to the gods.

After a spate of good to great sci-fi shows ("Silo", "Foundation", "Invasion", "Severance"), we happened upon this cotton candy comedy from Apple TV+ starring Kristen Wiig that takes place in Miami Beach in 1969. I've only seen five episodes so far (they drop weekly), and it's pretty good, though I'm frustrated with the waste of Carol Burnett. I want more Carol! The entire cast is fun with a capital F, with Wiig and Burnett and with Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb, Laura Dern, Ricky Martin, and Julia Duffy, who I've long loved (I'll always be a "Designing Women" fan). The set design, costumes, and hair and makeup are all outstanding, evoking the period as well as "Mad Men". I hope there's more to this than simply a tale of a shallow socialite wannabe, as we need to care a least a smidge about the characters. A slew of witty bon mots and snarky asides aren't going cut it to keep my attention.

This isn't so much a review as it is a reflection about how well this show has held up and what a joy it is to rewatch on Netflix. I'd previously seen the first four seasons on HBO in the early aughts, but I missed the fifth and final season. My husband has never seen it and it comes up enough in pop culture and is on many best-ever lists, so we slotted it in for one of our current dramas (we're also watching "3 Body Problem" and "True Blood", another one by Alan Ball).

We just finished S01 and I'm loving it all over again and agree with all the accolades the show has received over the years. After watching Lauren Ambrose as an adult in the recently concluded Apple TV+ series, "Servant", it's nice to be reminded how great an actress she's always been. With David's coming-out storyline in the first season, it's also a good reminder of what life was like in the early 2000s and how things have changed (though not all for the better, definitely). Everybody has probably watched this already, but if not, add it to your queue. It is well worth it.

This new docuseries on Netflix might be the most important show you're not watching. We just finished last night and it's well worth your time; I loved it and learned a lot without much pain at all. It's a good compliment to "Oppenheimer" and the Einstein docuseries I previously posted about.

A gripping documentary with amazing archival footage, this gives a great macro-level presentation of how we ended up with a Russian invasion of a sovereign Ukraine. The documentary lays out a long cycle of events that began with the atomic bombings in Japan in 1945 and how the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 signaled a false end to the Cold War, which has led to Putin's attempt to rebuild the Russian Empire in the 21st century.

If you're any kind of history buff like I am, turn on this show. It really helped connect the dots, fill in many missing pieces, and frankly, made the current nightmare we're all currently living in more understandable, though no less tolerable. 😫

I enjoyed this film much more than I thought I would. Before viewing, I skimmed IMDb reviews to see what the chattering classes were saying and it's barely broken a 6.0 here. It seems the original director's version was four hours long and Apple made him cut it to be palatable to audiences with small bladders (like me).

This version isn't too long and is doable in a chunk of afternoon time. The leads are good and it's got the typical Ridley Scott flourish, though definitely not amongst his top five best films. It did seem like there was a lot missing, mainly focusing on elegantly staged battle scenes with short shrift given to examining Napoleon the person, which meant after the movie, I ended up down a Wikipedia black hole to fill in the missing pieces.

The very things about this polarizing film that turned some people off, its weirdness and absurdity, were what made me love it. If you know Yorgos Lanthimos and his movies ("The Lobster", "The Favourite", "Killing of a Sacred Deer"), and you appreciate his unique vision, then this movie is for you (tho I'm not sure it's everyone's cup of chamomile).

I hadn't seen this before Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar, and now that I've seen her performance, that award is well deserved. She's at the top of her game, so entrancing and embodying this strange creature's journey from ignorance to self-awareness. The rest of the cast is great; the production design and cinematography are amazing; and generally, the discordant score works, although in some places it nearly drove me crazy (a short drive I know). YMMV, but I definitely think this is worth checking out. Maybe you'll be surprised (or maybe you'll hate me for pushing this on you), but at least you're supporting quirky and original movies. 🙌🏼

For some reason, I began watching this film oddly lacking any sense of excitement. I'd heard great word-of-mouth and I've been avidly watching gay cinema since I saw "Torch Song Trilogy" in December 1988, my freshman year at OSU (I'd just come out a few months before, ha!). It began preciously enough, but within the first 20 minutes, it won me over and I was totally entranced to the very end, where I then sat and wondered WTH I'd just seen and recalled the movie in a new light. (Trying not to give away spoilers...) f you've seen Andrew Haigh's "Weekend", "Looking", or "45 Years" (all great), then you're familiar with his work. This is a tender study in grief and while melancholy, it's never morose. I'm relatively new to the Paul Mescal party, but he's a magnetic screen presence and Andrew Scott, Jamie Bell, and Claire Foy were all excellent. This is a thought-provoking film and definitely worth a watch. (7.7/10)

We don't have kids, so I can't truly put myself in the place of a parent, but I was absolutely stunned watching this latest docuseries from Netflix. It boggles the mind that parents could be so easily duped and willingly turn their teenagers, no matter how troubled, over to these grifters and malcontents. Compelling and riveting, the 3-episode series describes the psychological and physiological torture teenagers were put under in the name of helping them straighten out at a "behavioral modification" boarding school. But it's not just one school and it's still happening. I'm thinking about the show days after finishing and horrified that this type of child abuse happens way too frequently.

This is a simple and short review: 'Go see this movie, in the theatre if possible and on a very big screen. We both loved it.'

We spent the last week in Khao Lak (heaven), but the week before, we watched "Dune Part 1" and then saw "Part 2" in the theatre on the day it opened. It was grand and epic storytelling on a scale I've not seen in ages. Both "Dune" movies are transportive like "Titanic" in 1998 and the original "Avatar" in 2009 (which I saw four times, including once at the Chinese Theatre). I've not read any of the "Dune" books, but I was able to grok what was going on (mainly), and while I haven't always been a Timothée Chalamet fan, he was excellent here, as was Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, and many others. Everything about the movie is epic and it's well worth a cinema visit.

In a recent episode of the brilliant (and super long-running) "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul appear as themselves in a typical and hilarious sketchy scheme hatched by the gang. Soon thereafter, we started watching "Breaking Bad" and we both loved it from the first frame to the last. Our admiration of Aaron Paul then led us to this series, "Bojack Horseman", which we've been working on for the past six months, fitting in an episode here and there.

This show was one of the most unexpected delights I've encountered in a long time, and undoubtedly one of the greatest animated series ever. It's a meta comedy about actors and agents and writers and hangers-on and all of Hollywoo and its brilliance and insanity. But this world of humans and talking animals is so much more than just a droll and sardonic take on the entertainment industry. The writing is brilliant and the voice cast superb, including Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Allison Brie, and Aaron Paul, joined by countless other actors, many playing themselves, including a recurring role for the hilarious Margo Martindale. If you're a fan of "Family Guy"' and shows of that ilk, you'll love this, and even if nothing I've said in praise of the show makes you think you'd like it, still give it a chance and you might be surprised.

Have you seen "Oppenheimer" yet? It helps to have seen it before this docuseries. It's a commitment of time (3 hours), but worth it, with amazing performances all around and a whole bunch of new knowledge learned.

This new docudrama on Netflix is a good complement to the movie, and in a trim 1h15m, dives into more detail about Einstein and his place in the firmament of history with regard to the invention of the atomic bomb. Of course, it's not going to paint the entire picture in a short time, but does add some good color about Einstein's conflicted conscience on what he helped unleash, however small his role may have been.

This is #6 of the 10 Best Picture nominees that we've seen so far, and it's a warm, authentic, and bittersweet film, set in late 1970 with everything about the production seemingly from that year, aside from actually using old filmstock. From the opening credits and title cards to the gorgeous set design, costumes, and other ephemera from Christmas 1970, it's a little mini-trip into movie-making of the era, with a tender story and an excellent cast. I had forgotten how much I like Alexander Payne's films and now am left wondering which of his other films should we queue up...? I've seen them all, so I need to decide which to queue up so the husband can get to see a(nother) great director at work.

I read in The Ankler, an entertainment newsletter, that this new movie on Netflix was atop the most watched films around the world, so we decided it would make a good choice for our super Saturday cinema this past weekend. Even though I live in a nexus of K-pop, we aren't huge K-pop stans, but do watch the occasional excellent movie ("Parasite", "Snowpiercer", "Train to Busan") or TV series ("Dr. Brain", "Pachinko"). This latest from the creative minds of Korea is a fun mindless romp. It's well paced, thrilling, pretty violent (though cartoonishly so), and with an excellent ass-kicking performance by the great Ma Dong-seok. It's supposedly a sequel to another movie, but we hadn't seen it and it didn't diminish our enjoyment. Check this out and add to your queue if you want entertaining dystopian entertainment to take your mind off our current dystopia. 😵

TBH, this had been in our queue for quite some time, at least since it won the 2022 Oscar for Best Documentary. However, as a diehard supporter of Ukraine and its fight for independence, I was put off by Navalny's earlier comments about nationalism and Crimea.

In light of his recent tragic death, we slotted this in for this past weekend's mini-film festival. I'm so glad I didn't pre-judge because this was an excellent documentary and I learned a lot. It's a taut and riveting portrait of a very brave man, and it was especially sad to see the final scene, when the horror of what an authoritarian despot can do became clear with the news of Alexei Navalny's assassination. This is on HBO here in Thailand, but watch it however you can. It's totally worth it.

I liked this film much more than I thought I would, and watching it made me think fondly of a friend and fellow cinephile who passed away recently and who was a huge Martin Scorsese fan. We used to have lively discussions about whether his long-time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, ever really edited anything from their films, since they're always sooooo long.

This latest from Scorsese, DiCaprio, and De Niro was no exception at 3.5 hours, but we divided it into two chunks and conquered it on Sunday. The first section was excellent and portrayed a complete inversion of what white people in America had come to expect as their birthright. The Osage with oil money, in their finery and jewels, with white maids and butlers, had to have driven white society nearly mad. It's no wonder they were sitting ducks, waiting for the voracious appetite of settlers and grifters to steal what hadn't already been stolen.

The second part starts once the (newly formed) FBI steps in, and is more familiar (and less interesting). There were definitely some issues with structure and narrative, and it could have been an hour shorter, yet it's still an excellent Scorsese outing and an exemplar of vision, mood, and technical precision, though not brevity. Alas.

Hubby was out with friends this past Saturday night, so I pulled this one up from the depths of the queue where it had been moldering for months. I should start by saying that I'm a huge Dan Levy fan and think "Schitt's Creek" is one of the top five most brilliantly written shows I've ever seen.

That said, this film, which he wrote and directed, was kind of a disappointment. In his directorial debut (and maybe because I still have Barbra's autobiography and her deep dive into how she works), I found some of his choices odd and occasionally off-putting. The audio and score in general was also inconsistent and clumsily used. There are several very nice turns-of-phrase and some snappy and witty dialogue, but in its entirety, as a meditation or thought-exercise on grief, it left me unmoved. The cast was very good, especially Ruth Negga who is fantastic and magnetic as always, but the movie overall was flat and surprisingly lifeless.