May Movies Part 2: The Sheep Detectives, I Love Boosters, Obsession

What are you looking for this weekend? A breezy British murder mystery solved by a flock of sheep? An absurdist tale about end-stage capitalism and greed in the Bay Area? Or a supernatural horror thriller about the dangers of making your wishes come true? Yup, this post is really covering all the bases!

The Sheep Detectives: I was so excited for this movie and it absolutely did not disappoint. Written by Craig Mazin (adapted from the novel Three Bags Full by Leonia Swann) and directed by Kyle Balda, this movie stars Hugh Jackman for about ten minutes as a shepherd named George who lives a seemingly idyllic life in a gorgeous little English village until he ends up...murdered. Every night, he would read murder mysteries to his flock as a bedtime ritual, and turns out, these animals could fully understand him. One of them, Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is the smartest and always figured out who the killer was in those nighttime stories. Well now she had to put all her deductive reasoning to the test to examine clues and study the cast of motley human characters who all may have had their own reasons to kill the beloved shepherd.

The mystery is very cleverly plotted, and I can honestly say that the revelation of the killer was extremely satisfying. The script hits all the mystery tropes, and there are lots of shadowy and mysterious characters who show up, while we have Nicholas Braun as the hapless British police officer who has never had to deal with a murder in this village before and therefore will need plenty of coaching from the sheep to get this case solved. The animation is perfect, lending a lot of character and sass to the sheep (otherwise famously expressionless animals) with excellent voice casting from the likes of Bryan Cranston, Chris O'Dowd, Regina Hall, Rhys Darby, Brett Goldstein, Bella Ramsey, and Patrick Stewart. The live-action cast also features stalwarts like Emma Thompson, Hong Chau, Molly Gordon, and Nicholas Galitzine, who certainly do not disappoint. This movie was everything I wanted and expected it to be. No notes.

I Love Boosters: Written and directed by Boots Riley, this movie is certainly everything I expected it to be, i.e. weird and wacky. Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, the leader of the Velvet Gang (also consisting of Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige, and later, Poppy Liu) who shoplift designer clothes exclusively from a high-end chain called Metro Designers that is owned by a high-strung designer named Christie Smith (Demi Moore). Christie is incensed at the amount of money she is losing because these boosters keep stealing her clothes, and most of the film consists of the juxtaposition of the bougie life led by Christie and her insanely expensive fashions alongside the very colorful but chaotic lives of the boosters who are struggling to make ends meet.

Aesthetically, this movie is a veritable rainbow of delights. The whole plot about how Christie's stores operate was wildly inventive and fun, and costume designer Shirley Kurata has done miraculous work from start to finish with every single outfit Keke Palmer and the rest of the cast sport in this movie - give the woman an Oscar immediately. But, in classic Boots Riley fashion, the third act of the movie leaps wildly into the absurdist abyss, pushing its metaphor of labor exploitation and capitalist evil to the umpteenth degree and featuring a lot of sci-fi and fantasy elements that imply a great deal of weed was consumed in the making of this film. If you're familiar with Riley's previous film, Sorry to Bother You, none of this will surprise you in the least, but if this is your first foray into his work? Settle in, you're in for a very bumpy ride.

Obsession: Yes, I gave in to the hype and headed to the theater to watch this film to ensure it continues to break box office records. Written and directed by Curry Barker, this is a classic horror movie about a man named Bear (Michael Johnston) who has a crush on a girl named Nikki (Inde Navarette) but is afraid to tell her or do anything about it. When he buys a magic object called the One Wish Willow, he expects it to just be a novelty toy, but makes a wish anyway. Obviously, he wishes that Nikki loved him more than anything else in the world. And obviously, that wish comes true in rather horrifying fashion.

What follows is a creepy and hilarious tale about how horrible it is when your dreams come true. At first, we have the honeymoon period where Bear and Nikki are deliciously in love and happy. But gradually, it becomes clear that Nikki might be a tad...unwell. She is behaving strangely, getting way more clingy, and eventually, starts to lose her mind if Bear leaves her for any period of time. Things keep escalating and getting more frightening, and eventually more bloody. 

Did this movie telegraph most of its jump scares from miles away? Yes. But was it still awesome to watch this in a crowded theater and scream and laugh alongside the rest of the audience? Hell yes. Horror movies are such a fun genre to highlight the collective spirit of movie watching, so if you only have the time and money to see one movie in theaters this month, this should probably be the movie you pick. The performances are brilliant (Inde Navarette in particular is getting a lot of love for her insanely eerie and incredible work - what she can do with her face and voice is simply a marvel), the script is entertaining, and it is endlessly compelling from beginning to end. The hype is real.

May Binges Part 2: Rooster, Margo's Got Money Troubles, DTF St. Louis

I have been watching several shows week-to-week in the past months, but now they're all available to you for one big, glorious binge. Each of these shows have been weird and wonderful in their own unique way, so I'm excited for you to get started on these and tell me what you think!

Rooster: Created by Matt Tarses and Bill Lawrence (of Ted Lasso and Shrinking fame), this is a show about an author named Greg Russo (Steve Carell), who writes popular mystery paperbacks with a swashbuckling protagonist named Rooster. His daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), is an Art History professor at a New England liberal arts college, and she is married to a Russian history professor, Archie (Phil Dunster). When Archie sleeps with a graduate student, Sunny (Lauren Tsai), naturally the marriage is on the rocks, and Greg shows up on campus to check in on his daughter. He then has to step in to help her after events spiral and she unleashes some of her righteous anger on Archie. The President of the College, Walter (John C. McGinley), is a fan of Greg's work and agrees to protect Katie's job if Greg will remain on campus and teach a creative writing seminar for a semester. And thus begins a semester of hi-jinks.

Yes, this is a comedy, but there's obviously a lot of high-stakes drama at play. I certainly found it very hard to understand why Katie wouldn't just dump her loser husband, particularly as Sunny is pregnant with his child, and I also found it hard to understand why Sunny was keeping the baby and holding out for a life with Archie. It's the British accent, I guess, it keeps those American women intrigued. The acting from every single person in this cast is stellar, and the tone is always so light, and breezy, and wonderful. There are great jokes in every episode (my husband and I still yell "Cop Hawk" at each other on occasion) and every character is enormously idiosyncratic, but like all of Bill Lawrence's other shows, there is a ton of heart that keeps you feeling warm and cozy. Steve Carell is always a delight to watch, and this show is no exception, so give it a shot. It's an excellent diversion.

Margo's Got Money Troubles: Speaking of actors who are always a delight to watch, you can never go wrong with a show that stars Elle Fanning. Here she stars as the titular Margo Millet, a twenty-year-old college student who has an affair with her English professor, gets pregnant (what's with all these college students being impregnated by married professors?), and decides to keep the baby (what's with everyone refusing to get an abortion?). Naturally, that decision leads to the titular Money Problems. Her mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), was also a single mom, who knows how hard it is, and therefore thinks this is a terrible decision. She is also not great with babies and is too busy trying to lock down her relationship with Kenny (Greg Kinnear), a religious youth minister who has a very rarefied idea of who Shyanne is. All of that will come to bear over the course of the series.

Meanwhile, Margo lives with three other roommates, two of whom move out because living with a baby is unbearable, but the other, Susie (Thaddea Graham), is a supportive babysitter who wants to help Margo win at life. Unfortunately, they still need to make that extra rent money, which is when Margo's father, Jinx (Nick Offerman), fortuitously shows up and moves in with them. Jinx is extremely supportive and great with babies, but he is exorcising demons of his own, all of which will also come to bear over the course of the series. 

Created by David E. Kelley, based on Rufi Thorpe's excellent 2024 novel, I cannot recommend this show highly enough. I haven't even gotten to the central conceit of the show, which is that Margo's solution to her Money Problems, is to start an OnlyFans account. The evolution of her work on that platform is truly wondrous to behold. In fact, while I loved the show, I would certainly exhort people to read the novel, because I remember being utterly captivated by its creativity and ingenuity when depicting Margo's OnlyFans work and how she learns to build a fanbase and create more engaging content. This show is brimming with excellent actors, has a unique and compelling narrative, and it will be one of the best things you watch all year. Get to it.

DTF St. Louis: This show is definitely one of the best things I have watched this year, but oh man, it's so hard to explain it to people. Written and directed by Steven Conrad, settle in for seven episodes of the most bizarre murder mystery you've ever seen. 

The story centers on Floyd and Clark (David Harbour and Jason Bateman), two men who start off as colleagues, and then become best friends, and then...things get complicated. At the start of the series, we know Floyd is dead, in suspicious circumstances, and two detectives, Donogue Homer and Jodie Plumb (Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday) are tasked with the investigation. The clues immediately point to Clark as the murderer - he was present at the scene of the crime, and after looking through his cell phone records, it becomes apparent he was having an affair with Carol (Linda Cardellini), Floyd's wife. But things aren't quite so cut and dried, and as these detectives investigate further, they unearth all manner of bewildering shenanigans afoot in this quiet suburb.

I won't discuss matters further - you have to let this show gloriously unfurl its wild petals around you and engulf you in its bizarre tone and sexual complications. A terrible thing has happened to Floyd, and every character is harboring some deep, dark secrets, but this is also a very dark comedy and an ode to male friendship. It's hard to keep track of time in this show, with the myriad flashbacks and revising conversations and scenes from different perspectives once we get a new piece of information. I don't know that I would have enjoyed watching this on a weekly basis - a binge was the perfect way to keep everything straight in my head and really indulge in the brilliant storytelling. If this was a book, I would have stayed up all night reading it, so get ready for an epic binge to finish up this show. All of the actors are at the top of their game, and you will not be disappointed.

May Binges Part 1: Big Mistakes, Beef, The Miniature Wife

Yes, I'm still desperately trying to catch up on all the new TV - truly a losing battle. But I've binged more shows and now it's your turn to binge them too!

Beef: I ordinarily don't do season-to-season reviews, but given that this is shaping up to be an anthology series and this season was extraordinarily good, I'll just go ahead and tell you to watch it, shall I? Created by Lee Sung Jin, this season felt much more chaotic and epic in scope than the first, now featuring two warring couples whose lives get intertwined in increasingly dangerous ways. Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan star as Joshua and Lindsay, a couple who help manage a fancy country club in California, but are trying to save up for their dream of running their own bed and breakfast. They used to be a cool couple, but now they are approaching midlife, their marriage is getting fractious, and it seems clear that thigns are goign downhill fast. Contrast this with the young couple Ashley and Austin (Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton) who work at the country club. They are young and naive, desperate to start their lives together but constantly set back by financial pressures. Will any of these couples succeed? Or will everything fall apart spectacularly? Watch to find out!

Over the course of eight episodes (much tighter than the first season's ten!), this season takes you on an emotional rollercoaster and you can never predict from one minute to the next who is going to be blackmailing whom, and when there might accidentally be a murder or two. Youn Yuh-jung also stars as Chairwoman Park, the Korean billionaire who becomes the new owner of the country club, and as she gets more involved in all the drama, things escalate to an absurd and exciting degree. Just let this show unfold before your eyeballs - make sure you set aside enough time to do so, because you're not going to be able to stop once you get started.

The Miniature Wife: Created by Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner (based on a short story by Manuel Gonzalez), this show stars Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen as Lindy and Les, a couple that have been married for a very long time. The spark is fading from their marriage, and they mostly just tensely quote their couples therapist's aphorisms at each other in arguments. Lindy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose career has now stalled after she moved to St. Louis to support Les's dream of working on cutting-edge research that could potentially earn him a Nobel Prize. That research involves the ability to shrink food so it could be transported more easily and then regrown when it arrives at the desired location. As the title of the show might have suggested, there is an accident and Lindy accidentally gets shrunk down to six inches tall. And Les, who hasn't yet figured out the formula to grow the shrunken objects back to their original size, has his work cut out for him.

I would watch this show a little bit at a time and frankly, it got to be a bit of a slog. Ten episodes long, 40+ minutes each, it was a bit too bloated. It would have been much better as a zippy half-hour comedy, but unfortunately, the writers meander through the story of this couple's chaotic marriage in far too much detail, giving us all the backstory about every single slight that led them to this precipice. In the present day, there's also a lot of unnecessary drama with supporting characters who don't really need to be there. The show covers a lot of good ground about how marriages require constant work, and also the nature of parenting, as both Les and Lindy have very different relationships with their teenage daughter Lulu (Sofia Rosinsky). But apart from the fun production design and camerawork to take us into Lindy's tiny world, this show struggles to be particularly engaging. I love these actors, and I watched all of it, but the whole time I found myself wishing they were doing something else.

Big Mistakes: Created by Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott, now here's a zippy half hour comedy that gets in and out in eight episodes. Levy and Taylor Ortega star as Nicky and Morgan, siblings who accidentally get on the wrong side of some Turkish crime bosses and are blackmailed into helping out with bizarre criminal enterprises. Meanwhile, their mother, Linda (Laurie Metcalf), is busy with their sister, Natalie (Abby Quinn), planning a campaign to run for mayor of their New Jersey town, so both women are too consumed with those logistics to notice the chaos Nicky and Morgan have descended into. 

Given how short and sweet the show is, I'll refrain from more details so you can let all the surprises wash over you. Suffice to say, Levy and Ortega are a great comic duo and watching Levy's face contort as he finds himself in impossible situations was my favorite part of the whole show. Nicky and Morgan are stereotypical adult siblings who have lost touch and have all these misconceptions about each other, but over the course of the show, they will start to learn and grow from each other, in both good ways and bad. I will warn you, the ending does have a cliffhanger, and Netflix hasn't picked this up for a second season yet, but I think the first season stands on its own two feet perfectly well and kept me very entertained on an otherwise boring weekend. It's charming and breezy, and sometimes that's all you can ask for. 

May Movies Part 1: Mother Mary & The Devil Wears Prada 2

Anne Hathaway is set to have five movies come out in 2026, and two of them are currently in theaters. Sadly, the Hathassaince is off to a rocky start. Let's dive into my reviews.

Mother Mary: Written and directed by David Lowery, I was very excited for this movie, given how much I loved his 2021 film, The Green Knight. I was expecting something similarly surreal and visually spectacular but unfortunately this movie is weird and unsettling, not in a good way. Hathaway stars as a pop icon named Mother Mary, who sings haunting dance music while wearing elaborate costumes and a halo. She is staging a comeback tour after she had an accident, but is unhappy with the costumes being proposed by her team. She heads to England, where her former collaborator, Sam (Michaela Coel), is working at a remote country estate, trying to prepare designs for an upcoming show. Sam is initially reluctant to work with Mary to prepare a new outfit, but after a lot of mysterious dialogue hinting at their past and Mary's clear desperation for someone who can interpret her artistic vision, Sam agrees.

What follows is a bizarre film where two women talk at each other and work out their creative differences and hostilities, but also, there's a ghost? Eventually there's an exorcism? And throughout there are flashbacks to Mary performing various songs, so the whole thing has a slightly surreal feel of a concert film? Listen, I did not get this movie at all, and I did not like it all. I'm sure there are high-minded people out there who thought this was a bold work of art, but to me it was a thought experiment that was better suited to being a 20-minute short film than a meandering two-hour extravaganza. Coel and Hathaway are two great actresses, and I would love to see them in another film where there's some actual plot. And maybe just make it a fun comedy, so we don't have to watch these two women weep at each other when they are capable of so much more expressive silliness. As far as I was concerned, this movie was an unfathomable waste of time.

The Devil Wears Prada 2: I am tempted to write "Electric Boogaloo" after that title, because unfortunately, this is a terrible sequel to the much-beloved 2006 movie. Directed by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosh McKenna (who were also responsible for the first film), Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci are all back to reprise their roles. This time, Andy (Hathaway), who has successfully spent the past twenty years building out a journalism career, finds herself unexpectedly fired and in need of a job. Well, turns out Runway, the magazine still led by Miranda (Streep) and her consigliere, Nigel (Tucci), is in need of a features editor, so Andy is back into the world of high fashion, trying to craft meaningful articles alongside puff pieces on chemical peels. Meanwhile, Emily (Blunt) now works at Dior, who is a main advertiser for Runway, so Andy is reunited with another former colleague. 

I won't get into the plot - there is a lot of drama around ownership of the magazine and evil billionaires (you'll get to see Justin Theroux chewing the scenery for all its worth, with an assist from BJ Novak who just has the same expression on his face throughout), and there are a LOT of cameos from random people that help to jolt you awake while you fade away into boredom. For a movie that is concerned about how magazines and creative pursuits could be replaced by AI, it's ironic how the script and hapless editing make the proceedings feel like abject AI slop. All of the plot points feel tropey, and no amount of valiant acting from this all-star cast can rescue the film from feeling completely unnecessary. It's the curse of high expectations - having just rewatched the original, which was so iconic, I wanted more of the same, and the sequel simply could not deliver. I do know folks who have thoroughly enjoyed this film as a likable piece of nostalgia, but if you were expecting quality cinema, steer clear.

April Binges Part 2: Company Retreat, Twenty Twenty Six, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins

I have been watching a lot of comedies this month and binged my way through two, while reaching the very satisfying finale of another one I had been watching week-to-week. Now they are all available to give you a giggle and some respite from reality. Dive in!

Company Retreat: This is from the creators of Jury Duty, but obviously you cannot just keep faking jury duty all the time, so this time, creators Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg decided to hire an unsuspecting man named Anthony as a temp for a fake company called Rockin' Grandma's Hot Sauce. Anthony joins the company and gets to know the wacky staff, and a week later, he is whisked away on their annual company retreat. He thinks the camera crew are just there to film a documentary about small businesses, but little does he know there's a whole operation behind-the-scenes that are filming him at every turn and trying to see what he will do in increasingly chaotic situations.

Much like Ronald in Jury Duty, I don't know how the show's producers managed to find such a gem of a man, but it's wonderful to watch Anthony just roll with the punches and make some deep and meaningful connections with these strangers. Things fall apart real fast, but Anthony, the good-natured temp, is always ready with a smile and some calming words to help defuse the situation and get his zany colleagues back on track. They even capture a moment when he says that everything is so nuts that you couldn't write a script to match it, which the show's writers obviously got a real kick out of.

The penultimate episode is where Anthony really gets to shine as the hero, making a grand gesture to help save this company and the people he has come to love over the course of such a short time. And then in the final eighth episode, we get the grand reveal where the show's producers walk him through just what has been going on for the past two weeks and we get some insights into the production design and rehearsal process that took place months before filming. It's such a massively creative endeavor, and it's insane to think that it requires everything running on rails - sometimes they don't, and we get treated to some moments when the actors had to quickly cover up a mistake, or the moments when they simply couldn't stop laughing. It's a very funny show, but mostly it's an extraordinarily heartfelt show that reminds us that there are still some very good humans out there in the world.

Twenty Twenty Six: I had no idea that creator John Morton was doing this show until I randomly saw a YouTube ad for it and discovered all six episodes were now available to binge. Which I proceeded to do in a heartbeat. Hugh Bonneville is back as Ian Fletcher, the man that we got to meet in Twenty Twelve, when he was helping to plan the 2012 London Summer Olympics, and W1A when he was trying to help re-brand the BBC. This time, he's in Miami, trying to help organize the 2026 FIFA World Cup (the show has to bleep "FIFA" anytime a character says it, which makes for an amusing running gag).

Much like those other shows, Ian finds himself amidst a group of weirdos, all of whom are trying to promote their agendas, and simply cannot answer a single question with a straight answer. There's the Zurich liaison, Eric (Alexis Michalik), who is absolutely no help in a crisis; the Sustainability champion (and potential love interest), Sarah (Chelsea Crisp), who is passionately pushing initiatives to make the games more environmentally-friendly but fighting a losing battle; Gabriela (Jimena Larraguivel), a Mexican woman who is heading up Optics and Narrative and wants every match to be held in her home country; Nick (Paulo Costanzo), the extremely volatile Business and Legal head, who is as New York as they come; Owen (Stephen Kunken) the head of Logistics, who doesn't seem to realize that's his job; and then Phil (Nick Blood) a Mancunian who loves David Beckham but otherwise doesn't know what's going on. And of course, they all have to deal with the social media team, who know nothing about football, but are going to try to market the hell out of it anyway.

The only other character who is back from the other shows is Will (Hugh Skinner), as Ian's bumbling assistant. Here, he continues to be thoroughly lost but still failing upwards, and it's fun to see how his every mistake turns into a potential win for this hapless team. Every episode features yet another bizarre crisis that requires quick decision-making and strategic problem-solving, which are of course, anathema to this group. And yet, they always manage to pull something out of the hat at the eleventh hour and save the day in some extremely improbable fashion. Each episode is only a half hour long, but I could watch these people talk in their strange double-speak for hours, saying absolutely nothing but talking a mile a minute anyway. It's truly the best of British humor, and while I don't care about the World Cup at all, I'm so grateful for it just because it allowed me to get another season of this absolute chaos.

The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins: Created by Robert Carlock and Sam Means, this is exactly the show you want if you've been missing the zany stylings of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or 30 Rock. Also, like Kimmy Schmidt, you may find yourself singing the theme song (composed by Jack Grabow) every single time you turn it on. 

Tracy Morgan stars as Reggie Dinkins, a famous football player who became infamous once he was caught gambling and was ignominiously kicked out of the NFL. Now, an Oscar-winning documentarian, Arthur (Daniel Radcliffe, in an incredibly delicious comic role), has arrived to film Reggie and his life, in the hopes of rehabilitating his image. Arthur himself has had a fall from grace after he was fired from directing a superhero blockbuster. He has a lot to prove, but a documentary about Reggie Dinkins may not be the best way to do that. Meanwhile, Reggie's support system consists of his ex-wife Monica (Erika Alexander), who is still his manager and is very close to him as they co-parent their teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall); his best friend Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), who was his former teammate and is a very lovable doofus; and his fiancée Brina (Precious Way), a young entrepreneur who is always hustling to find a new side hustle, and fits right into the madness.

This is a show that is incredibly joke-dense. Forget the actual plot and storylines, half of the time you will find yourself dying of laughter at side gags involving fake TV shows like FDNY: Chicago, where New York firefighters go to Chicago to fight fires but keep forgetting the time difference or losing their hoses at O'Hare. If that sounds like the spectacularly dumb but hilarious comedy you're into, then buckle up, because this show has ten episodes of the stuff to deliver. All of the actors are having a great time, and who knew Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe were the comedy duo we had all been missing in our lives?! The show also has a tremendous amount of heart and is so good-natured. Everyone on this show loves and supports each other, even if they are the most ridiculous people on the planet, and every time you watch an episode, you are bound to laugh out loud at least once and then leave with a big smile on your face.

April Movies: The Drama and You, Me & Tuscany

Are you looking for a romantic comedy? Or a romantic dramedy? Dive right in to hear about one of each!

The Drama: Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, let me first say that I wouldn't be surprised if this movie got nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar next year. It features a bizarre and intriguing premise that just keeps ratcheting up the tension for the entire film until we get a glorious catharsis at the end, and boy did I enjoy it. But also, that makes this movie very difficult to write about, because I am loath to spoil a second of it for you.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson star as Emma and Charlie, a gorgeous couple who met in a coffee shop and are now in the throes of wedding preparations, a week out from the big day. As the movie opens, Charlie is writing his wedding speech and seeking input from his best man, Mike (the wonderful Mamoudou Athie), and that whole sequence serves as a charming way to tell the whole love story of how these two people met and fell in love, and why they're so into each other.

But of course, this movie is titled The Drama, and the event that sets things spiraling is after the couple go out with Mike and his wife, Rachel (Alana Haim), get a little tipsy, and then share some...revelations, that lead us down a very twisty and ridiculous path. Again, I won't spoil anything, but let's just say that after leaving this movie, it made for a very robust discussion with my husband and other friends about how they and their significant others would have reacted if placed in a similar situation. 

The actors are magnificent, the script is off-kilter and unpredictable, and the movie's tone is just a wild rollercoaster of emotion that will leave you squirming in your seat, sometimes in delight and sometimes because you're so deathly uncomfortable with how everyone is behaving. It's probably not a movie you will want to rewatch but man, that first watch is a grand experience that you'll be talking about for days afterwards.

You, Me & Tuscany: Unlike The Drama, this is a movie where you will be able to see every story beat coming from a mile away. It's basically like watching a less sophisticated While You Were Sleeping, but it's charming AF, so you can't really complain. Written by Ryan Engle and directed by Kat Coiro, this is a story about what happens when a down-on-her-luck woman, Anna (Halle Bailey), decides to travel to Italy after a chance encounter with a handsome stranger, Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), in a bar. He tells her all about the villa he bought in Tuscany that is now just sitting empty, so naturally, when she finds herself unable to find a hotel room, she decides to break into his house. And naturally, complications ensue when his family members discover her the next morning.

One of those family members is Matteo's cousin brother, Michael (Regé-Jean Page), who is a very hunky winemaker. Sparks start to fly between him and Anna, but that is all very inconvenient because Anna has had to tell a little lie...that she is Matteo's fiancée. Oopsie. What follows is your standard romcom, full of misunderstandings and romantic entanglements and complications that could be sorted out if people would just be honest with each other, but where's the fun in that?! There are also zany supporting characters like the horny aunt, Francesca (Stella Pecollo), who is having an affair with a plumber named...Luigi, and Lorenzo (Marco Calvani), the taxi driver who helps Anna out when she's new in town and becomes her only confidante in this whole mess.

Listen, is this movie high art? Certainly not. The dialogue is clunky, with Italian characters deploying Americanisms (I drew the line when the elderly nonna literally said the phrase, "tap that ass"), and it's all very familiar and treading on well-worn ground. But you're in Italy! The sun is shining, the wine is flowing, and Anna is buying juicy tomatoes from a friendly farmer's market to whip up a delicious bruschetta for dinner later that night. How could you not bask in the glow of all of that charm for two hours? Just soak it in and let your brain relax; we all deserve a cinematic vacation once in a while.

April Binges Part 1: Bait & Taskaree

Haven't been watching enough TV about South Asians? Well, here I am with two VERY different miniseries. One is a British comedy-drama about the pressure of representing the South Asian community (and particularly Muslims) in the UK, while the other is a classic Bollywood action-drama about the customs officers at Mumbai's International Airport. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Bait: Created by and starring Riz Ahmed, this is the story of a struggling British actor named Shahjehan "Shah" Latif (Ahmed), who is auditioning to be the next James Bond. Obviously, this role comes with a lot of meaning - Bond is considered a quintessentially British role, that has hitherto only been played by white male actors. Naturally, it would be a coup for Shah, a British Pakistani Muslim, to get this role. But the significance of it leads him into a spiral of self-sabotage. We are also introduced to his family, consisting of a doting mother, Tahira (Sheeba Chaddha), jokey father, Parvez (Sajid Hasan), and two cousins who were raised with him, Zulfi (Guz Khan) and Q (Asiya Shah). 

This is a short and sharp show, only six episodes, under thirty minutes long, so I don't want to get into much detail. You have to let the wildness of the show unfold for yourself, but suffice to say, it does a brilliant job of capturing the South Asian immigrant experience, the particular nastiness of the racism faced by South Asians in Britain (be prepared for the P-word to be deployed a lot), and the difficulties of straddling both your brown community and the white one you're trying to integrate into. 

All of the scenes with Shah's family felt like something that could have been filmed during any of my family gatherings (well, with slightly less drama and destruction, of course), and at the center of it all, we have Riz Ahmed, with those big, expressive eyes, conveying a world of hurt, humiliation, and confusion as he tries to navigate this very weird situation he has been put into. The show was not as funny as I wanted it to be, but it was certainly a chaotically good time and a wonderful addition into the TV genre of layered South Asian representation. If you're looking for something fresh and new, this is exactly what you seek.

Taskaree: Are you looking for layers? Then move right along. With this show, created by Neeraj Pandey, you're going to get a rather typical Bollywood masala action romp, with a little dash of romance and plenty of police brutality. This show thoroughly lacks any nuance, but it's still a very fun ride with plenty of twists and turns, so you will have a good time, as long as you turn your brain off first. 

Emraan Hashmi plays Arjun Meena, a customs officer in Mumbai's International Airport who has a reputation for taking his job seriously and being incorruptible in a profession that is otherwise well known to be full of people who are willing to look the other way if offered a nice little bribe. When a new commissioner, Prakash Kumar (Anurag Sinha) is brought in to crack down on all the international smuggling that goes through the airport, Arjun and his most trusted colleagues are brought together on a task force to help bring down a criminal syndicate headed by Bada Choudhary (Sharad Kelkar). Bada has couriers operating out of Al Dera (for some reason, a fictional city that is just a stand-in for the UAE), Ethiopia, and Milan, so what follows is a very international escapade told with a great deal of Bollywood flair. 

The story is fast-paced, every episode ends with an amazing cliffhanger, and as long as you suspend your disbelief at points, you are promised a great time. It's only seven episodes long and makes for a quick and dirty binge, so settle down on your couch. Also, your Hindi vocabulary is really going to expand as you learn more about smuggling terminology and the layers of Indian intelligence bureaucracy than you could have ever expected. So, it's fun AND educational!