Well, I would recommend The Favourite, which is very funny. I really like Rachel Weisz.
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I like Rachel Weisz a lot, too.
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We watched If I had Legs I would Kick You last night, a psychological drama about a mother on the edge, brilliantly played by Rose Byrne. It was a bit more intense than we’d expected, so I can’t say that we “enjoyed” it, but it’s a good movie nonetheless. With a surprise appearance of Conan O’Brien as Rose Byrne’s therapist.
In sticking to the topic of female burdens, we also binged the rest of the strange and wonderful The Change’s second season written by comedienne Bridget Christie (who also happens to be on the Taskmaster season we’re currently watching).
As a Twin Peaks fan, my tolerance (that’s not the right word, exactly) for this is really high, so I did not find the style groundbreaking, nor even done as well as Lynch did it. Yes, the shots are long. Yes, there are extended dialogue-free scenes. But I think the fact that so many pixels have been devoted to an admiration - nay, an astonishment! - of this says more about our collective goldfish attention spans than anything else.
Obviously, I have entered my “seen it all before years” and thus cannot be trusted to respond to anything without sniffing that it’s nothing new and is indeed merely the watered-down version of (insert arty example here).
Yeah, I’ll give you that. I’m not all that familiar with Last Man on Earth, but I think that show might have done something similar, at least in its first few episodes. I also wonder whether future seasons of Pluribus might explore some of the moral questions raised in The Good Place about the collective good, personal responsibility, etc.
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Watched 61st Street. Courtney B. Vance is always excellent. Compelling (if slightly overwrought) story with a strong ensemble. Slow, but engrossing and builds to a strong finish.
Watched all of the new Matlock with Kathy Bates (new episodes in February). Light, soapy but Kathy Bates is delightful.
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Jay Kelly. I liked this quite a bit. It put me in mind of Birdman in its theme of an aging star looking back and forward. Billy Crudup was excellent, I thought, and that bar scene was the highlight of the movie for me. I also spent some time trying to figure out whether the montage of scenes shown during Kelly’s awards presentation were actually scenes from other Clooney films.
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It was scenes from his actual movies. I loved that segment and the look on Clooney’s face as he watched. I liked the movie and Adam Sandler and Crudup were excellent.
Watched a documentary about 1975 on Netflix last night that was interesting. Lots of discussion about movies that came out around 1975 and country dealing with the traumatic end of Vietnam war, Nixon impeachment and the rise of a new conservatism headed by Reagan.
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Aha! Did you recognize them, or is this information available somewhere?
ER, Gravity, Syriana, Michael Clayton, Syriana.
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Aha! I was looking for something from The Facts of Life. Mais non!
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there’s a 60 minute doc on the making of Jay Kelly. recommended. I actually appreciated the movie more after seeing all the craft that went into it. at a minimum, check out the section that discusses how Jay walked through the mirror.
https://www.netflix.com/us/title/82128111?s=a&trkid=13747225&trg=cp&vlang=en&clip=82157339
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The Mastermind was recommended by the NYT as one of 2025’s best movies.
It was alright, but def not in my list* of best movies of the year 
Followed that up with another hilarious episode of Beavis & Butthead — the current season is laugh-out-loud funny, plus 1.5 epis of Taskmaster, which is always entertaining.
*Mostly bc I don’t have one. I can barely remember what I’ve watched longer than 24 hours ago 
Drops of God was good. I was surprised how much we enjoyed it. I didn’t realize there was going to be a new season.
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Drops Of Gold is terrific but I think it helps if you’re into wine and wine education. I’ve seen it twice now and can’t wait for season 2.
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17 Days in Canada’s Middle Earth. It’s a video journal of two brothers canoeing and hiking in the Northwest Territories. We started watching later in the evening and thought we’d just shut it off part of the way through and go to bed. After a few minutes, we realized that there was no way we were going to turn this off. Absolutely entrancing.
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Re: Plur1bus. I’ve completed binge watching the 9 episode season & generally liked both its form and its plot. Also liked the acting and even the screenplay. I’ll watch Season 2 when it arrives. But: (PREPARE FOR RANT HERE) starting with the middle episodes, I just couldn’t stop being bothered by the determined choice to only include (non-human) animals when it suited their purpose. It seriously detracted from my enjoyment (which still ran reasonably high but really?). And they opened the door to it themselves, unnecessarily, with the wolves. If they didn’t, I probably would’ve just accepted that it was a tangent they decided to not go down. But, if you’re going to present a threat by wolves (twice!) and warn another character about snakes, etc in the jungle, well then, you have a responsibility to be consistent (so say I) and show the mice/rats/squirrels/cats that would be running through the wide open well stocked supermarket, the other less than well fed animals coming to the abandoned (& occupied) houses, and the spiders, ants, etc that would’ve let’s say “complicated” the jungle trek. And, you would have the sense to show Carol being a little concerned about venturing outside without any means of self defense - at least after the wolves. But no, off she goes in the dead of night, to sit outside without a care and to go exploring through a warehouse. Ridiculous omission! (OK: END OF RANT).
As for the overall choice of “join vs fight” well I might be the only one agreeing with joining. After doing some high living till I got bored (ala the French guy) of course. Joining this bunch seems more peaceful, especially given our world as it is. And there are only 11 “outsiders” so no need to sing Hare Krishna or promote any cult’s belief system to the heathens. No one else with me here?
Share my own thoughts and conscience with every single human in the world, and vice versa?
Hell no.
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I can’t think of a single piece of American media that presented “joining” as the correct choice. “Good” humans are supposed to be rugged individualists, suspicious of groupthink (it’s for Commies!), who would rather die than give up their free will. We like our rebels: our Rambos, our Jo Marches, our June/Offreds, our Huck Finns. There are also probably at least a dozen Star Trek episodes that make this point.
It did not occur to me to be bothered by this, but I see how one might be. I’m more interested in how Carol can kill people just by getting mad and wonder how I might learn this valuable skill.
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Unfortunately, even in that reality, the skill couldn’t be targeted.
Maybe not by Carol. I bet I could focus.
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