Other than the fact that Jughead says “Bizarrotown” somewhere in the episode, I actually couldn’t figure out why this episode in particular got that moniker. I mean, no one even gets attacked by a bear or adopts approximately a thousand troubled youths or attends a fight club in a drained-out gym pool, so… not that bizarre, actually. In fact the real bizarre thing about this episode is that poor forgotten Kevin gets a plotline, so, maybe that explains the name.
Hello, again! The second episode is funny and kind of great, yo! Continue reading →
It’s time for the Oscars again! And wow, is it a weird race this year. On the one hand, we have a genre movie like Black Panther, which is more than deserving but would never have gotten nominated a few years ago, and Roma, an arthouse darling by an auteur director that would be a lock for Best Picture/Director if the movie industry weren’t so angry at Netflix. And then we have the old standbys–a retrograde racial reconciliation fantasy, a couple of mediocre biopics, and the requisite movie-about-show-business that the Academy historically loves. So who knows?
We got every major category correct last year, but it was also a much more standard and predictable race. So here are our predictions–and our choices–but honestly, it’s anyone’s game at this point.
PSA: Similar to last year—when I watched all the nominees except Dunkirk—I have not watched Vice. I hold a real grudge against Adam Mckay after the Margot Robbie bathtub scene in The Big Short, and I am not overly impressed by prosthetic makeup, so I don’t think it would change anything. Continue reading →
In this episode, Betty learns moral lessons totally unjustified by actual events; Jughead channels Humphrey Bogart to rather amusing effect; Archie continues to be an absolute bore; and Veronica’s outfits are by far the MVP of the episode.
What just happened? No, seriously, what did I just watch?
Ostensibly, Aquaman is a movie where Jason Momoa plays Arthur, the half-merperson king of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, who must go back to Atlantis to be its king and battle his half-brother Orm for control of the underwater kingdoms with the help of a magic trident. But this makes it sound like this movie in any way makes sense or has a reason for existing, which, as far as I could tell, it does not.
It will, I’m sure, surprise no one to hear that last week’s ending was a fakeout. Nor will it surprise you to hear that this episode contains gratuitous shirtlessness, ludicrous plot twists that no one bothers explaining, and shaky understandings of legal concepts. But it combines a Silence of the Lambs homage with a classic high school show Taking-the-SATs episode as only Riverdale could do, and the jokes were on point!
A classic pilot! And it’s actually a pretty good one, in the sense that, like all the best pilots, it’s a microcosm of the whole. This series premiere captures everything I admire, and exemplifies everything I find completely facile about Breaking Bad. Continue reading →
It would be a giant understatement to call this an “unpopular opinion,” but I just don’t like Breaking Bad. I don’t super enjoy watching it, which would be fine–there are a lot of great shows that I admire even as they’re not to my taste. But in this case, even the admiration factor is pretty low. Beyond simple enjoyment, I just don’t think Breaking Bad is that great a show. Continue reading →
Adversion 