After not watching much television at all for most of my life, the Morning Briefing turned me into an avid binge kind of guy. I like to have something on when I'm working on the second half of each day's MB, and I burn through a lot of what's available. As I am always looking for something (mostly) non-political to write about, I decided to start a recurring column to share my thoughts on what I've watched lately. I am not a professional TV critic, but I have mad skills when it comes to being opinionated. Also, I've been on Japanese television, so, yeah.
For now, I'll be using a beer rating system. It's the standard 1-5 model, where 1 is the worst and 5 is the best. Five beers are always better. Here we go.
A House of Dynamite (Netflix) This movie seemed like a great idea because it stars Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Jared Harris, and Gabriel Basso (the guy from The Night Agent). It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Oscar for The Hurt Locker. What could go wrong, right?
Almost everything.
The flick really had me going for the first 20 minutes or so, mostly because Rebecca Ferguson was on screen a lot then. I would watch her browse Etsy sites all day while she had The Hallmark Channel on in the background. She plays a captain (if they mentioned the military branch I forgot it) who wears a pencil skirt and heels to work in the White House Situation Room. At that point it was one of my favorite movies.
The premise is that the United States is about to get hit with a nuke and nobody knows who launched it. The scene in the Situation Room is frenetic, of course, and the pace of the movie is very entertaining at that point. The first part of the movie is then repeated twice, each from a different perspective. Nothing new is really added. You're just hearing the same dialogue again (everybody is on the phone), each time with different actors on the screen. And no more Rebecca Ferguson. It's beyond tedious.
Idris Elba as POTUS is a real stretch. His accent is so thick he can barely sound like a Londoner. In fact, three of the four principal characters in this movie are higher-ups in the United States government but aren't played by American actors. Did all the American actors have multi-vaxxed Covid or something? Obviously, I'm not complaining about Rebecca Ferguson. Her Captain Pencil Skirt is flawless.
As awful as the repetition is, the ending is far worse. There's no resolution whatsoever. The screenwriter says that it's intended to start a conversation. If you look online it certainly did start a lot of conversations, all of them about how much this movie blows.
RATING: 🍺
Nobody Wants This (Netflix) This is a rare Netflix offering that I happened upon the night it was released. I began watching the first season last year mostly because Kristen Bell is usually quirky fun. To my surprise one of my cousins (we're a talented family) showed up in the first episode so I stuck with it. To make things even weirder, I popped onto Netflix the night Season 2 dropped and watched the whole thing in one go.
The premise is fun: a decidedly non-religious Los Angeles sex and dating podcaster (Bell) falls for a young eligible bachelor rabbi (Adam Brody). The characters in this are all well-developed, and Bell isn't the only one who is quirky and fun.
What I like most about Nobody Wants This is that faith and religion are at the center of it, and they're handled very well. Hollywood is usually terrible when dealing with religion and people of faith. The religious people are almost always one-dimensional caricatures and horrible people. Not so here. Brody's Rabbi Noah is devout and very likable. Bell's Joanne has a very complex approach to being thrust into a religious world.
There's nuance here! Just when we thought it had been blacklisted in Hollywood.
This is lighthearted, easy watching. As my good friend and partner in thought crime Stephen Green said on Monday's episode of "Five O'Clock Somewhere," we all need that sometimes.
RATING: 🍺🍺🍺🍺
Lynley (BritBox) I like watching British crime shows because I know I won't be hit over the head with ignorant opinions about American politics. BritBox and Acorn TV are my safe spaces.
This show is a fun mismatched detective premise. The senior detective is next in line to become an earl when his father dies, but he prefers police work. His partner is a blue collar detective sergeant who is skeptical of her new hoity toity partner and superior. Hijinks ensue!
OK, maybe not hijinks, but there is plenty of subtle humor to go along with the drama. Also, each episode is around 90 minutes long, so the season really four feature films.
RATING: 🍺🍺🍺🍺
I think that will do for the first installment of Strengthen Your Stream. We'll see if I can be more pithy the next time and make it shorter. Who knows. This is a new adventure for all of us! Here's the Season 2 trailer for Nobody Wants This:
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