Seven Things Learned from Taylor Sheridan's '1883'
1883 is the tale of the Dutton ancestors traveling along the Oregon Trail (just like the early video game most of us GenXers played on ancient home computers) on the way to Montana to settle the Yellowstone/Dutton ranch. Featuring Sam Elliot, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and Isabel May, I gained an appreciation for Sheridan's work (he is the sole writer of every episode) and just finished it last night.
I Like to Watch | Inventing Anna (2022)
Why did any of these people believe in her bullshit?
Because she didn't care if you liked her. Unlike everyone else among our affirmation-addicted bunch of apes, the Anna Delvey of Shondaland didn't give two shits what you thought of her or even if you bought her bullshit.
I Like to Watch | Magnolia (1999)
When I went to see Magnolia I discovered a film that captured this concept more clearly, more beautifully, than I could have ever conceived of myself. I was transcendent.
I Like to Watch | Tree of Life (2011)
It's about the molecular connection we all have with the planet and the universe and each other. It's about primordial soup evolving over time into weeds that Jack is instructed to pull from the root, not just the top. It's about the brief glimpse of a human life, filled with pettiness and violence and sex and love and hate.
I Like to Watch | Succession (HBO)
I hated it. I loved it. But I really hated it. I loved the score (especially the opening which I ended up watching every single episode because the music is so ridiculously Punch Drunk Love perfect). I hated every character, every scene, every moment.
I Like to Watch | The Beatles Get Back (2021)
I won't likely sit through all eight hours again but I'm already dipping back in. It's like being in a room with four effortlessly talented musical legends and hoping they can get it together if only for the music's sake.
I Like to Watch | Dopesick (Hulu)
Opioids are not created for recreation like quaaludes, weed, or coke. Opioids are created for destruction in exchange for massive profits.
I Like to Watch | Eternals (2021)
My wife asked me what my favorite moments were and I was struck dumb. I couldn't think of a single moment. "I loved the end credit scene?"
Six Cult Horror Films You Forgot About That Will Blow Your Mind
Tired of the rehash of old franchises to chill your bones this October? Try a couple of these and be creeped out for good.
I Like to Watch | 15 Minutes of Shame (HBOMax)
This is a genuine documentary, absent much of the one-sided propaganda so joyously celebrated in our culturally divided pre-Civil War stance.
I Like to Watch | Worth (Netflix)
I'll confess. I've never shed a single tear over the attacks on September 11, 2001.
I Like to Watch | Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings
Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings is certainly not the first movie with an Asian cast or even an Asian lead. It is the first of the MCU to do this and given Marvel's extraordinary run and global dominance, this cannot be ignored.
I Like to Watch | The Chair (Netflix)
The fact that there are thinkpieces out in the ether complaining that the series doesn't skewer the teachers, the students, Melville, or any of the other popular demons but centers its criticism on all involved indicates the thing has legs.
I Like to Watch | Mrs. America (Hulu)
If there's one source of joy I embrace in film and television it's superhero shit. No johnny-come-lately, I loved that stuff before I had pubic hair so the fun I have watching any show featuring super-powered characters is incomparable. A close second is historical political dramas. I love 'em.
I Like to Watch | Promising Young Woman (2020)
Travis Bickle was a young man traumatized by war and the abandonment he felt as society realized he was fucked up by a system designed to fuck him up. Cassie Thomas is a young woman traumatized by a system in place designed to fuck her and discard her like a piece of trash.
I Like to Watch | The Walking Dead
At the (long) tail-end of the pandemic, the rest of the 10th season of The Walking Dead resumed airing and I found myself undeniably un-inspired. I didn't really care much for The Whisperers and after they bumped Rick Grimes off and then carted him away on a helicopter, the show sort of fizzled. I couldn't figure out what was missing (besides Rick) so I decided to go back to the beginning and watch the whole thing again.
I Like to Watch | Gerard Butler Movies
Less enchanted by the romcoms in his IMDB (P.S. I Love You, The Ugly Truth, or Playing for Keeps) or even his super badass phase (300, RocknRolla), my Gerard Butler jam happens once he gained a bit of weight, got the slightly droopy underchin, and did his level best to do one of the least convincing American accents since Kevin Costner tried an English accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
I Like to Watch | True Crime Television
True Crime is not so much a genre of how terrible some people can be. It is a genre that acts as the mirror to society as it is rather than as we hope it is.
Wonder Woman 1984 Couldn’t Save the Story
Wonder Woman 1984 was a disappointment. And not as much for me as for Diana and Wonder Woman. And for actor Gal Gadot. She was robbed of an interesting story. There is no character development in WW84 for our hero. Diana is in the exact same place as she was at the end of the first film.
I Like to Watch: The Rock (1996)
But the sheer out-of-body beauty and over-the-top ridiculousness of 1996’s Nicholas Cage/Sean Connery spectacle The Rock is the pinnacle of machismo Michael Bay genius.
...that the cruel joke is that prisons and cliffs share the same architecture: an edge you’re afraid to cross. The only way to learn which one you’re standing on is to step forward and trust gravity to reveal the truth.