The Expanse Season 4

Knives Out

Booksmart

Rick and Morty Season 4

Bojack Horseman Season 6

The Lighthouse

Big Mouth Seasons 1-3

Chernobyl

Love, Death, and Robots

Some stunning animation in service to a few serviceable stories.

Legion Season 1

Hobbes and Shaw

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Mission Impossible: Fallout

John Wick 3

Mindhunter Season 2

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

The Boys Season 1

Dragon Ball Super: Broly

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love

Dark Season 2

Stranger Things Season 3

Alita: Battle Angel

Ghost Fleet

Pokémon Detective Pikachu

Good Omens

The Terry Pratchett is more in evidence than the Gaiman.

Captain Marvel

Very didactic.

Fleabag Season 2

Season 1 had already retreated toward the outermost bounds of my memory when Russian Doll brought it momentarily back into relief. And now, hey, it's season 2.

Shazam

Silicon Valley Season 5

Crazy Rich Asians

A Star is Born

Avengers: Endgame

Veep Season 7

Barry Season 2

Barry Season 1

Games of Thrones Season 8

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

The Guard (2011)

Justice League vs. the Fatal Five

Reign Of The Supermen

Hereditary

Doom Patrol Season One

Utopia (2013-14)

Exploits extreme violence and quirky aesthetics to distract from its essential hollowness.

The dissonance between its savagery and shallow characters—like dumping a bucket of pig's blood on a sidewalk chalk drawing—is very reminiscent of contemporary comics.

Dennis Kelly discovered that one person forcing another to do something they don't want to do on pain of death or torture or watching someone they love suffer makes for drama and so, wanting as much drama as he could possibly get, decided to create an entire show of nothing else. Similar to another dumb show, House of Cards, which consisted exclusively of betrayals. You have to betray someone to get your morning coffee in the House of Cards universe. In the Utopia universe, you must threaten to rape someone's wife in front of them to get them to give you the employee discount.

Stupid fucking male auteurs.

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan

Homeland with a scooch less sophistication.

You Were Never Really Here

Woke Travis Bickle takes on Pizzagate.

Triple Frontier

Imperial supergrunts at play in the violent hinterlands with a local woman's life as stakes, all Prisoner of the Caucasus style.

Bumblebee

why

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Horrifying dystopia of end-stage corporate colonization of the online space—and, with it, every aspect of US culture, until our models of empowerment, of adventure, of beauty are sterile plastic molds endowed with exactly enough "personality" to maximize profit.

'"Curmudgeon"? No, why do you ask?'

Good bit, at least you have complexity.

Conspiracy (2001)

The Favourite

Movie three of the fucked up back era.

Mandy

Widows

Léon: The Professional

What a weird movie. Tropes feel off because of the early 1990s. Tonally all over the place. Gary Oldman does the effete, weirdo psychokiller trope fairly well, sometimes veers into absurdity. Natalie Portman sure gets over the death of her family quickly. This movie is fucking ridiculous. Leon is every weird French guy in New York, though. That's accurate. Great, now Lolita overtones.

Millennial sophistication: lol shit is meaningless, let's get strident
Gen X sophistication: all sides are shit, a pox on their houses
Boomer sophistication: Freud!

Man, we really were just fine with overtly sexualizing minors until like 20 years ago.

Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Russian Doll (2019)

Groundhog's Day + Fleabag + Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Young Justice: Outsiders

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Subtweeting Trump is just pandering to the liberals.

Otherwise, like a lot of recent US cultural production, this is remedial history for an illiterate people, and so heavy-handed that it will turn off a lot of oh-so-clever, supercilious, recalcitrant white boys. But they were probably a lost cause to begin with.

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

Observe and Report (2009)

Stopped watching this after 25 minutes, read summary on Wikipedia. Got the point. Portrait of suburban authoritarian that maybe identifies overmuch with its overrated, weedbro star.

Stalker (1979)

A return to my backpages with Liz Groebel & co.

The Expanse Season 3

13th (2016)

The carceral state 101

The Expanse Season 2

Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

The Expanse Season 1

Cobra Verde (1987)

Amazing movie.

Moon (2009)

Re-watch with Will.

Aquaman (2018)

The space program of 2018.