Plague edition

Greetings fair friends! I survived the great summer plague of 2024 and return to you beaten but not defeated, scratchy voiced but sultry. (Translation: I had a summer cold.) In the 5 days I wrestled with the fevered beast, (seriously, just a cold) I watched an enormous amount of televised entertainment. Here's a run-down to make up for my lack of posts last week.

🎥 Back to the Future 1 and 2 (Netflix)
You know the drill on 1 - still good, though rape-ier than you remember - but when was the last time you watched Part 2? I had actually never seen it so can attest from a first-timer's POV that it is... fine. The parts involving chase and fight scenes lean so hard on slapstick that they seem straight out of Looney Tunes. And it bounces around between timelines a bit too much. But when you're laying in bed moaning - and not for good reasons HOO-A! - it's a perfectly acceptable watch.

🎥 Brick (Prime)
High school neo noir —which is a new one for me—starring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt. Written and directed by Rian Johnson. (That's the Knives Out guy). I had to turn the captions on to understand what they're saying - and it's in English, mind you - so you need to be in the mood for that kind of vibe. But it's a pretty unique, enjoyable movie.

🎥 The Haunting (Pluto)
You have to watch at least one bad movie when you're sick so it might as well be a 'scary' one. Y'all, this is bad. Laughable special effects, an over-the-top sexpot played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson perpetually frozen in Owen Wilson Face mode. You'll laugh at all the wrong places.

📺 Hacks (Max)
Yes I'm late to this party and yes you can gloat about it. But damn this is great. Jean Smart is a ball-busting bad-ass, and I'm jealous she gets to play this part. She and Hannah Einbinder play off each other expertly. Some of their best moments are when their broader generational differences clash in what come off as very real exchanges. One of my favorite lines is when Deborah calls Ava a millennial and she replies, "I'm actually Gen Z. Millennials are, like, 40."

I think that's enough for one week. I have plenty of opinions about what's going on in the political world but you have to pay me for that. Why don't you, by the way?