Santa Clarita Diet: Mom's Eating Men

I never got around to reviewing Santa Clarita Diet last year, but I certainly told everyone I met to watch it. So now that I'm done with the second season on Netflix, let me take to the blog to tell all you holdouts that there's yet another thing you need to binge-watch posthaste.

Drew Barrymore stars as Sheila Hammond, a realtor who lives a very contented suburban life with her husband and coworker, Joel (Timothy Olyphant), and teenage daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson). However, their normal existence is quickly disrupted when Sheila falls sick, profusely vomits all over a house that she and Joel are trying to sell, dies, and then comes back to life as an undead zombie craving human flesh. Did I mention this is a comedy?

Like any great sitcom, Santa Clarita Diet has two key things going for it: stellar writing and a stellar cast. The main cast are sublime, including Skyler Gisondo as Eric, Abby's nerdy best friend who quickly learns the Hammonds' secret and employs his love of science and science fiction to help them out with possible cures. Olyphant's line delivery as the completely hapless Joel, who loves his wife and will do anything to save her, which now suddenly means having to murder people, is one of the highlights of the show. You are guaranteed to keel over at least once per episode from watching him deliver some utterly insane line with a terrified grin. And Hewson is fantastic as the profoundly sarcastic Abby, a girl who will never tell her parents she loves them, but will fight tooth and nail to keep her family together.

The writers on this show are comic poets. I could pull up any episode from the show, scroll to a random timestamp, hit Play, and immediately giggle over some ridiculous joke. This show is so densely packed with humor that it's one of those rare treats that you could binge-watch multiple times to ensure you got all the jokes you missed the first time around. And of course, at the center of all this hilarious mayhem, is Drew Barrymore, America's Sweetheart, playing both to and against type. This role is perfect, because it allows her to both portray the nice and sweet lady we're familiar with, but then suddenly revert to a raging cannibal who waxes lyrical about the orgasmic delight of eating a man's liver while her husband nervously titters.

Santa Clarita Diet is a masterpiece of a show, endlessly entertaining with never a dull moment. Created by Victor Fresco (the man who created the similarly bonkers and spectacular Better Off Ted, a show you must seek out immediately if you haven't already), this show is like nothing you've ever seen before. It is funny and bloody and you will find yourself constantly hitting "Play Next Episode," because nothing else is more important than finding out what is going to happen next to the Hammonds.

A Quiet Place: Silent Screams

By now, you probably don't need me to tell you that A Quite Place is a fantastic movie. However, as someone who generally doesn't watch a lot of horror, let me use this review to tell any fellow horror-avoiders why this movie might be right for them.

First off, this movie is written and directed by John Krasinski, of The Office fame. The man was renowned for comedy, and was not a horror fan before he got this script. Therefore, he's coming from the same place as you - he's not a big horror guy, but boy, oh boy, did he dig this story. And what a story it is. For two hours, you will watch a family living in near-perfect silence. Why are they doing that? Because aliens have invaded the planet and they attack any living thing that makes a sound. Which is quite a reason.

The entire film is a wondrous exploration of the powers of production design. This family has come up with incredibly innovative ways to minimize the amount of noise they make in their home or in their environment. Whether it's the little roadways of sand they walk on (on tiptoe in bare feet, natch) or the fact that all of their Monopoly tokens are made of soft material so you can't hear anything as they move around around the board, there are little gems of ingenuity hidden throughout the film. It makes you appreciate how creative and resourceful this family has been and understand how they've managed to stay alive for as long as they have.

The cast is also nothing to sneeze at. Playing the husband and wife, real-life couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are pitch perfect as the protective parents who will stop at nothing to save their children. Blunt, in particular, is a wonder to watch as she manages to convey love, warmth, terror, and sorrow effortlessly without a single word of dialogue. And the children (Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds) are astonishing actors, particularly Simmonds who is actually deaf and clearly had a phenomenal influence on making this movie feel real and true.

The amount of silence in A Quite Place is profound, and it is a very eerie feeling in a theater when you can literally hear your heart thumping because there is nothing to hear on screen. There were moments when an audience member would cough or a phone would beep and I would jump because I thought it has happened in the movie and the aliens were about to come bursting in. This movie firmly instills a sense of terror in you, and I don't think anyone ever screamed when something shocking happened on screen because we were terrified of making any noise. It is an atmospheric and creative horror masterpiece, and while you might be a little twitchy during and after, you'll also be flooded with a sense of amazement about what a truly unique experience you had at the movies. 

Blockers: Comedy With a Heart of Gold

When I saw the trailer for Blockers, I was certain I had zero interest in watching this movie. It looked loud, crude, and unremarkable. However, the weekend it premiered, I saw a lot of a articles from critics I respected, all raving about what a great movie it was and exhorting audiences to not be misled by the trailer. Sufficiently intrigued, my friend Katie and I headed off to the theater, where we proceeded to laugh for two hours and walk out with a warm, fuzzy feeling of a Saturday morning well spent.

On the surface, the story doesn't seem to warrant this much admiration. It's about three high school girls and their parents on prom night. The girls have all decided to lose their virginity (hashtag #SexPact2018!) and their parents, who find out accidentally, are determined to hunt down their daughters and prevent them from making a huge mistake. Cue the hi-jinks, with the harried adults (played by the hysterical trio of Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz) trying to crash high school parties, battle with belligerent teens, and get to their precious angels before it's too late.

Meanwhile, the three girls (the incandescent trio of Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Vishwanathan, and Gideon Adlon) merrily barrel through this film as the three most natural teenage girls you have seen on film yet. Each presents a very unique variation on girlhood: there's the pretty and put-together extrovert, the sporty and frank go-getter, and the shy introvert battling with some secrets, but together they are a formidable example of female friendship, steadfast, supportive, and true. They reminded me a great deal of the friends I had growing up (and still have to this day) and there isn't a Mean Girl in the bunch. Which is always a relief in a comedy where you're trying to imagine a good world that isn't populated with garbage people.

And in essence, that is what is so special about Blockers. While it has loud and brash comedy moments (all of which unfortunately featured in the trailer), at its core, it is a story about a bunch of people who all love each other very much and only want what's best for everyone. Every single character (whether a parent or child) has been rendered in loving detail, and it's astonishing how the writers have packed so much character background into this movie without making it explode with exposition. Director Kay Cannon, who wrote the entire Pitch Perfect franchise, clearly knows how to tell wise stories about teenage girls, and what transpires on screen is a wonderful story about fast teenage friendships, transitory but binding adult friendships, and the different relationships mothers and fathers can have with their daughters that ultimately boil down to teaching your kid as best as you can and then trusting them to make the right choices.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my main takeaway from this movie, which is the performance of Geraldine Vishwanathan as Kayla, the teenage girl blessed with John Cena as her father (thereby making her a sporty superstar) and Sarayu Blue as her mother (thereby making her fabulously feminist and half-Indian). I don't get to see a lot of Indian women in Hollywood movies, and this was the first time I was seeing an Indian teenage girl on screen who simply looked Indian with nothing else really mentioned about her background. Instead, she got to be an everyday teenager who talked like everyone else and expressed normal, everyday teenage opinions. I turned to Katie and said, "This is the Indian teenager I've been wanting to see on screen all my life!" and now I finally have her.

So yeah, watch Blockers. It is an incredible film with at least one performance guaranteed to speak to some part of your life experience. And lest I forget, it is ridiculously funny and guaranteed to make you laugh out loud, so really, win-win all around.

Love, Simon: The Best Romcom of the Year

Yeah that's right, it's only April, but I'm calling it. Love, Simon is the best romantic comedy of 2018. Though perhaps it's difficult to call it a comedy, per se, as my friend Katie and I spent a significant time bawling in the theater while watching it. But they were happy tears, I swear.

Based on Becky Albertalli's novel, the movie tells the story of Simon Spier (breakout star in the making, Nick Robinson), a closeted gay high schooler. He has amazing parents (his parents are played by Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel, who from here on out should play everyone's parents in every high school movie ever), an adorable sister, and a core group of friends that he has known for years. But despite this strong support structure, he has kept one thing hidden from everyone who knows him - the knowledge that he is gay. His excuses are myriad: why do gay teens have to come out when straight teens don't have to, what if everyone treats me differently, I'll wait until college to be out and proud, let me finish high school without anything changing. It's all incredibly understandable and funny and poignant, and for anyone who has ever had a gay friend in their life, it's a terrific insight into their mind at this challenging time of life.

The plot centers around a website that all the high schoolers use to share secrets. When an anonymous student named Blue posts that he is gay, Simon starts e-mailing him under the pseudonym Jacques, eager to connect with one other person who is going through the same experience as him. Unfortunately, someone discovers his emails and blackmails him with that information, threatening to out Simon to the whole school unless he helps the blackmailer get a date with one of Simon's friends, Abby. Naturally, a lot of teenage comedy and angst ensues.

This is a clever, funny, and towards the end, stupidly romantic movie, replete with a grand gesture and swoony moment. But of course, what makes it so unique is that it's about a gay teenager finding love instead of a straight couple. And isn't it about time? I love romantic comedies, but lately the genre has felt played out. Turns out, I still love a romantic comedy, I just needed more diversity in terms of who was falling in love. If this was a story about a straight couple, it would still probably be funny and charming, but it would completely lack any pathos and wouldn't tug at my heartstrings at all.

So what moments made me cry? SPOILER ALERT (seriously, don't read this paragraph till you've seen the movie). The moment when Simon comes out to one person and she responds simply with "I love you." The moment when his best friend is talking to him about how she often feels like an outsider when she's at parties and doesn't really feel like she belongs (yeah, teenage me had all the feels). Of course, the much talked about moment when his mother accepts his coming out in the most loving and wonderful fashion every portrayed on screen. And the less talked about moment but equally wonderful acceptance of his father, who is such a bro but woke enough to know that nothing has changed just because his son is gay.

Like all great teen comedies, this movie also has an epic soundtrack that may be partly responsible for all my feelings. Directed by Greg Berlanti, who is gay himself and has made his fair share of TV shows about teens, Love, Simon demonstrates a warm empathy and love of all of its central characters. It features a world in which coming out is difficult but not insurmountable. This is a world that is still aspirational for many teenagers, though the tide is slowly turning and making it more likely that parents and friends react with loving acceptance. With the introduction of this movie into the pop culture canon, I can only hope more closeted folk have the courage to either come out and stop living in fear, or at least take joy in seeing themselves portrayed positively on screen. This movie may be the first time a gay teen discovers that people could respond to their revelation with a simple, "OK, I love you." We always say it and we have to keep saying it, in more movies and more TV shows and more songs. Love is love is love.