Mae Martin’s autobiographical-adjacent Netflix series Feel Good was one of the great emotional experiences of our 2020 Year of Television. Playing an emotionally truthful/factually ambiguous version of “Mae” navigating love and addiction as a London stand-up, Martin’s easy charm and astounding vulnerability immediately captured our hearts, earning them a nomination for Outstanding Leading Performance in […]
The Queen’s Gambit embraces you like a warm marshmallow. Adapted from Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel and set in a flawlessly decorated pastiche of 1960’s America, the newest Netflix sensation tracks the meteoric rise of chess prodigy Beth Harmon as she battles her personal demons and finds a family to fill the void her real one […]
When it premiered in July 2013, Orange is the New Black was only the third original show on Netflix. House of Cards, which I’ve always maintained wasn’t half as good as reputed, will be remembered for the worst reasons. Hemlock Grove isn’t likely to be remembered at all. Which leaves us with OITNB. There are […]
As a sworn loyalist to the dying landscape of network television, I spend much of the year watching TV the old fashioned way- on the TV, one week at a time. So, when summer finally hits and the networks shut down their programming for a few months, I finally have the time to catch all […]
Phil Rosenthal is a happy-go-lucky ball of quirky energy. The Emmy-winning creator of Everybody Loves Raymond was at the ATX Television Festival to talk about his new Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil, an earnest travel & food reality show where self-professed “schmuck” Rosenthal goes places, talks to people, and eats stuff. Tragically, the day I […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Sense8 is a really fascinating show. It simultaneously pushes boundaries while also feeling long overdue. It boldly addresses a huge array of topics like sexuality, gender, race, politics, human nature, and a whole lot more. Sometimes […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The divide between people who like Mindhunter and people who love Mindhunter seems to hang on episode 8. Two episodes before the end of its first season, Netflix’s 1970s FBI drama about the development of psychological […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Netflix’s The Punisher has an amazing ensemble, but possibly the most intriguing castmember is Amber Rose Revah. First of all, she’s done everything from an LGBT cult film, I Can’t Think Straight, to House of Saddam to Indian Summers and more, more, more. […]
*moderate spoilers ahead* Some of my earliest memories of the Marvel comics character ‘The Punisher’ come from the old PlayStation 2 game. A gritty third-person shooter where you could have Frank Castle (who, in this incarnation, stood at well over six feet tall and wore a flowing black trenchcoat) kill people the old-fashioned way, or […]
I love half hour television. Most of my favourite shows are half hours- not necessarily comedies, but half hours. Peak TV has led to a boom in genre rebellion, shows that live in the unclassifiable grey and understand that “digestible” and “simple” are not synonyms. Because they are a half hour, I actually watched all […]
I love half hour television. Most of my favourite shows are half hours- not necessarily comedies, but half hours. Peak TV has led to a boom in genre rebellion, shows that live in the unclassifiable grey and understand that “digestible” and “simple” are not synonyms. Because they are a half hour, I actually watched all […]
I love half hour television. Most of my favourite shows are half hours- not necessarily comedies, but half hours. Peak TV has led to a boom in genre rebellion, shows that live in the unclassifiable grey and understand that “digestible” and “simple” are not synonyms. Because they are a half hour, I actually watched all […]
*several spoilers below* I spend this weekend watching Netflix’s The Defenders from the comfort of my squashy red armchair, alternating between chuckling at Krysten Ritter’s facial expressions and groaning whenever Finn Jones gets melancholy. By the end of it, I had developed a sort of chuckle that was half-groan: an exhalation of joy that was […]
The third story in A Series of Unfortunate Events is “The Wide Window” and it’s…fine. It is good at points, but never achieves any greatness. The pacing problems from “The Reptile Room” continued, and got worse. *Spoilers ahead* Overall, I liked “The Wide Window”, but I liked it less than “The Reptile Room”, which I […]
A Series of Unfortunate Events continues to delight with “The Reptile Room”. While this adaptation of the second book of the series was fun, some pacing issues and gaps in logic made it a little less solid than “The Bad Beginning” parts 1 and 2. *Spoilers ahead* Much of the success of “The Reptile Room […]
Netflix needs to slow down. They appear to be operating under a “the more the merrier” business plan and at a certain point that level of saturation cannot possibly support itself without more quality control. I’m not saying they need to stick their head into every project to the extent that, say, NBC does but […]
Other than Harry Potter, if there was a book series that dominated my childhood, it would have to be A Series of Unfortunate Events. The stories follow the Baudelaire orphans as they are pursued by the evil Count Olaf who wants to seize the orphans’ fortune. Despite the dark premise, the books were clever and […]
There’s a lot to love about this series. The way it deals with society’s criminalization of clothing, of black culture and black people. The heavy stylizing of Harlem and the characters who inhabit it, going past caricature and into something deeper, into what it means to be black. But I think my favorite part of […]
Trayvon Martin’s death marks one of the most significant moments in the history of the hooded sweatshirt (henceforth referred to as a hoodie). The hoodie has been made to seem synonymous with Black American culture, but it’s also lent its stylings to thug culture, criminal culture, “badassery” culture and anonymizing culture. As an item of […]
We live in a world that is full of people. We see some of them every day, we recognize the big names and the prominent celebrities, but we also face familiar individuals, people that interact with us on the interpersonal level, individuals who do not affect the world at large, but small parts, microcosms, samples […]
I’m not old enough to be nostalgic for the ‘80s. And yet, I am. Plus, Winona Ryder is one of my all-time favorite actresses (from the angst in Heathers, and Bettlejuice in the ‘80s to Edward Scissorhands, Girl, Interrupted, and Reality Bites in the ‘90s and more, she just got me). So when I heard […]
I don’t think there are enough words in the English language to design how revolutionary watching Grace and Frankie can feel. There are actual honest to God sexy sex scenes featuring septuagenarians. Septuagenarian WOMEN. There are long conversations about vagina lubricant and feeling invisible after 50 and the difference between alzheimers and normal 70 year […]
It’s been a very uncomfortable week for me as an Asian-American media consumer. It started Tuesday, with the new Doctor Strange trailer, continued Thursday as stills of Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell emerged, and concluded Saturday, when I had to stop my Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt binge after the unbearably self-satisfied episode, “Kimmy Goes […]
For the past three years, I’ve been ranking every film I see- just the new releases, from January 1st to December 31st. The rankings are subjective, based entirely on how much I enjoyed and/or connected with or appreciated the film rather than on some sort of objective artistic criteria. Basically, this is a list of […]
Finally, finally, after months of waiting, Jessica Jones is here. Since the first stills of Krysten Ritter in character as Jessica were released, I was ready for this show, and the first episode not disappoint. In a world with a lot of superhero TV shows already airing, and more planned, Jessica Jones has no trouble […]
I’ve been obsessed with Wet Hot American Summer for years. It just gets me, and it only gets better the more you watch it. So I freaked out when I heard that they were making a prequel. And Netflix’s eight-episode prequel Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp did not disappoint. Yes, it was […]