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⭐8/10 Another season of Survivor and my complaints are the same as always. The ending always leaves a sour taste in my mouth because this game is pretty broken at this point. Another winner where you would have an impossible time explaining why they deserve to win to an audience that doesn't breathe Survivor.  But I won't let that get in the way of an amazing season! This was a big season bringing back popular players from the previous 50 seasons. I loved seeing all of the old players, most of which I wasn't familiar with. Lots of very fun personalities that led to great drama that only Survivor can manufacture. Again, the bones of this show are fantastic, and this season had it all. The drama, the scheming, a few meaty challenge beasts, debates over honor. I like that they aren't afraid to bring back the truly zany personalities. Mike White, Christian, Coach, Ozzy, Cirie, all legends, all fun to watch. The big twists were sometimes a lot of fun and other ti...

⭐6/10 This is standard issue Netflix slop. Jess chose it, and it was never going to really appeal to me, but honestly it was sweet enough to win over my calloused heart a bit. It's about an old grieving woman with nothing to live for, but then she runs into a down-on-his-luck rascal and finds meaning in mentoring him. It's wholesome, has a tidy ending, and I'll always appreciate an aging protagonist. Also it's filmed in Deep Cove. I've been there! That was cool to see.  It's not a masterpiece but it's good for a cozy evening at home. 

⭐ 9/10 I wasn't sure if Beef needed another season, and its very easy to draw some lines between analogous characters in both seasons, but this is very much a worthwhile followup to the first season. It hits on a bunch of the same themes as well, but what's wrong with more of a good thing? In this season, there are two couples. One is Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan (Llewyn Davis reunion), who run a fancy country club. The other is Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton who work at the club. The younger couple sees the older have an explosive fight, they record it, use it as blackmail, and we are off. Melton is a revelation here! I loved him in May December, and here he is this dorky sweet jock, an unusual combo he completely nails. He is so funny, and so handsome, and so warm, I loved every scene he was in. Can't say I was an early stock holder but I'm all in now. Make this guy James Bond for all I care, I want to see him in everything. His dynamic with Spaeny is great, anot...

⭐ 7/10 Do you think anyone for the rest of time will watch The Mandalorian and Grogu, and then Notting Hill, in the same day? I was wracking my brain for some thematic connections as if I was writing a high school English essay on the two, but no luck. This movie is all about the chemistry of its two leads, and there is no denying it. Julia is steely and reserved, but when she smiles its light transcends the screen you are watching it on. And Hugh, good old Hugh with those baby-blues, what a charmer. I don't think he's conventionally attractive, but the bumbling brit with quips and that shy smile, I get the appeal. They are very well balanced in this movie, him as a nobody running a travel book store and her as the most famous actress alive. They have a meet cute, a bunch of follow up encounters where she is hard to get to but he is persistent and charming and funny. I actually got quite a few laughs out of this movie. But that's where my praise for the movie will end. She...

⭐ 4/10 I used this gif when writing my Mandalorian Season 3 review, and while I was watching this movie it's all I could think of. I'm gonna repeat myself probably, but I loved the first 2 seasons of that show. Week to week adventure, no super heavy lore, a relationship evolving as our characters get stronger and their armour and weapons get cooler. Very simple, very steady, very enjoyable in small weekly doses. Season 3 abandoned the fun for this lore that isn't interesting, widening beyond the titular pair in boring ways. This movie has no lore, but also no story. They talk to some people, go somewhere, have a fight, repeat. I mean, they are trying to rescue Rotta the Hutt, but that is dispensed of early and then they are kind of just fighting to survive. I don't know, just so boring, neither character grows or changes. Just an absolute zero of a movie, brings nothing new or exciting to the table. Sigourney Weaver is in this and it looks like she is being held at gun...

⭐ 4/10 Woof, what an actual dumpster fire of a final season. I've been conflicted about this show, its obsession with disgusting deaths and being as verbally raunchy as possible, but was always fascinated by this heroes as the bad guys thing, especially Anthony Starr as Homelander. He is so terrifying, or at least he was until this season. They clearly didn't know how to end this. The show always satirizes current day, but this goes beyond satire to just copying. Every hot-button thing you can think of is squeezed in here, we get it, the bad super heroes are like Republicans! And then Liberals are now "Starlighters", being thrown into internment camps for unclear reasons, just a really lazy photocopy of the polarization we see in American politics today. There is this writer in the show who writes movies, and he shows up a couple times to say meta lines about how difficult finales are, can't give everyone what they want. Give me a break, what a cop out veiled as ...

⭐ 9/10 CBC got me again, advertising a limited series podcast during a holiday when there is no Frontburner. This one was so fascinating, about this cult led by a diminutive woman who calls herself the Queen of Canada. Their beliefs are far right, with anti-vax stances and classic Q-Anon "the libs are holding children prisoner" panic. Where this gets interesting is how this cult moved into an abandoned school in a tiny village of about 100 people. This town is in Saskatchewan, and while its not close to where my parents live I can see exactly what this looks like in my head, especially since there is a separate weird cult already living in my parents' community! This reminded me of Eddington, where this town becomes completely divided on the basis of the cult. Some feel its a scourge, and it is, using up limited community resources, being super creepy, and issuing death threats. Others are sympathetic, ultimately becoming aligned with the cult, and some people in the tow...

⭐ 7.5/10 The best season in recent memory, but still I show I mostly pan through. A highlight was Jost as Pete Hegseth and Aziz Ansari as Kash Patel, I love how biting and mean they have become about these idiots running the country, as they should be! Jost plays that macho frat energy so well, and if I was Pete I would lose sleep over this portrayal. There is Trump every week, which is exhausting, so their energy is a welcome change. I thought there were a ton of standout sketches, like Matt Damon as an auctioneer in a failing marriage, or the Olympic luger who is afraid of it, or Josh O'Conner with my guy Ben Marshall as sensitive male strippers. I love that Ben Marshall is part of the main cast, and while I miss the Please Don't Destroy trio their energy lives on in him. I hope he gets a bigger role going forward. Ashley Padilla is clearly the MVP here, and they use her in everything. She has this wacky crazy energy, but her facial expressions and attempt to have a calm ext...

⭐ 10/10 Everyone knows this movie, everyone loves this movie. What fascinated me is that when we stayed at an Airbnb that had a ton of kids toy, the first thing my 2 year old boy saw was a Buzz Lightyear, and when he saw it he gasped "what is that!?". Amazing to me, that this toy that was made for a movie 30 years ago still holds so much power. And that's the premise of this movie! A super cool toy that causes the other toys to get jealous as the kid ignores them all. And I watched that happen, so of course I had to show him the movie. I remember the whole thing by heart, but with fresh eyes and a child beside me I was truly blown away. The detail, the jokes, the animation, it's all incredible. I listened to a podcast about the technological leaps that happened here, the years of innovation that culminated in this, and the many hurdles that almost completely derailed the movie. I'm always fascinated by the troubled productions that produce masterpieces, and this ...

⭐9/10 Whew, what a movie. I thought I'd be settling in for another one of Taika Waititi's signature comfort watches with nice indie vibes and cute humour. That's mostly what this movie was! It had some pretty outrageous moments as it is a movie about a young German boy thinking he's best friends with imaginary Hitler, but yeah, this was a Waititi movie for the first 90 minutes. I thought that for the most part, it was equally parts smart and funny. I think it did a nice job of showing the realities of indoctrination and what that probably looked like for a lot of German kids. He's confronted with his own beliefs when he learns that his mom is hiding a Jewish girl in his home, and again, I think this is expertly done. How do we think when our worldviews are challenged? Especially poignant coming from the POV from a sweet but misguided child.  The real talking point is the final 30 minutes. This is a vague spoiler so beware. Absolutely gutting. My initial ...

⭐9/10 The Bake Off is back! Another awesome season, plenty of fun contestants, and I think this is about as good as the Bake Off has ever been. I think Noel and Allison have found their chemistry as hosts and the season's cold open is a dumb and amazing as it's ever been.  Spoiler: Maybe the most dominant run by a winner. Jasmine was an early favorite personality wise, but she pretty well never had a bad day and was the easiest winner to call midway through the season. Love to witness greatest once in a while even if it makes the finale less dramatic. But also she was writing exams for med school while she played? That's not fair, you shouldn't be able to good at everything. 

⭐7/10 It's western season baby! Opening this summer with what many consider to be the best ever made, Sergio Leone's magnum opus. While I agree it's got plenty of style, and Morricone's score is as good as ever, this movie fell short of their other greats for me.  First off, this movie is absurdly slow. I would actually say this was like what Pluribus was for the Gilligan. Leone has always been methodical in his directing, but this was simply too much. The opening is 15 silent minutes of cowboys being bored, passing time, and while I respect the boldness of such a move, it should have ended there. This movie is 3 hours and felt like 4. It was a pretty tight story, and the movie structurally was a lot like A Few Dollars more, a movie I loved. But that movie was much shorter and sharper, and while I appreciated the patience of this one, letting us get fully immersed and invested in a sweaty, grimy, hot west, my patience ran thin by the end. Another issue, I th...

⭐9/10 What a lucky break for Chalamet in that he could play himself in a movie! He was born for this role! I admit, as a leader of the Chalamet haters club, he absolutely rocked it in this one. This is a movie about an absolute piece of shit human being trying to be the best at ping pong. I disagree with Tim's take that there is much push and pull here, that his charm overcomes his insufferability, and I don't think there's really ever a moment where I thought, hey maybe he's not so bad! Not that I think that was his takeaway, but I think this movie is less about a man's pursuit of greatness, but more an exploration of complete narcism and ways we justify selfishness, even to ourselves.  I didn't really find myself cheering for him because I wanted him to succeed, but more because you see how much stock he puts into all of this, and seeing him fail would be painful like seeing a man burn alive no matter who it is. Still, I think you can't help bu...

⭐10/10 Again, I just finished watching the movie shortly after reading the book, but it's not the first time I've seen it though it's been a while. It's a Coen Bros adaptation, and they seem to follow the source material super carefully for books they adapt. I think McCarthy pretty much writes screenplays with his novels so it works really well, but for that reason it's hard to deferentiate the two mediums. I think the Coens go for a bit of a dark-comedy style horror movie, making it a bit lighter than the book, but essentially it's the same thing nearly line for line.  I give most of my thoughts on the story in my book review, so I'll try to keep this a little more brief. To summarize my thoughts: it's a perfect movie, and Javier Bardem gives one of the most iconic performances for a villain ever. And yes, the haircut is the most terrifying thing about him.  That first confrontation between the two main characters stood out to me as a perfec...

⭐ 9/10 This is a documentary about the biggest chess scandal of 2022! I followed this story very closely at the time, and I found this retelling really excellent in laying out all the players and external factors. Basically Magnus is the GOAT, lost to Hans who is a cocky young American, then threw a fit and quit the tournament and accused him of cheating. The fallout was immediate, Twitch streams deep diving how he could have possibly cheated, with the joke becoming that he used anal beads. I loved how this documentary made no one the good guys. The leaders of chess.com, a site I despise, are first shown throwing around kettle bells and being like, we don't look like your average chess players. Yes you do! Cocky and cringey. Anyways, they run the worlds biggest chess site, and are completely beaming talking about this scandal because it coincided with COVID and Queen's Gambit, which led to a huge surge in usage on their site. All publicity is good publicity for them, even if i...

⭐ 7.5/10 Relatively low score, similar to how I felt about the first season, but that doesn't take away from my awe at this project. The amount of work to Truman-show somebody like this is crazy, the amount of planning and expense alone, only in the age of billion-dollar tech companies making TV could this happen. The idea is the same as the first season, some dude is hired as an intern at a hot sauce company, goes on their company retreat, but doesn't realize everyone else is an actor. They put him in a million awkward or high-pressure situations and we watch as he figures things out. I think this setup is worse than the first season, since jury duty is more self contained, and I can see that guy actually believing what he is experiencing is real. Anthony in this season literally expresses a bunch of times "this feels like a movie or something", which they laugh about in the end but I think is an indictment. If that was me I would be searching for cameras everywhere...

⭐ 10/10 This is still basically the only kids show we watch, and this final season was tremendous. The same still holds, I love the animation and the voice acting and the compact episodes, but there were a couple episodes here that have become trademark episodes in this house. There is one about contractors (tradies) who come to build a pond in their backyard, while the girls spy on them. We had contractors in our house at the time we saw this and Ezra was obsessed with the episode, we watched it every night for probably a month and I still never got tired of it. Seeing everyday things through the imagination of kids is the power of this show, but weaving in intrigue for the parents is always present. There is another one about their aunt coming to visit, and its clear she doesn't come very often. The reason for this broke my heart, something relatable to many adults in our life, my heart just aches thinking about how Bluey's mom explains to the kids why its hard for her to vi...

⭐8/10 This is a coming-of-age movie about an 8th grade Chinese-American kid. I think it's phenomenal and reminded me a ton of other great coming-of-age movies like Eighth Grade or to a lesser extent Lady Bird, but because those movies already exist, I certainly found it a little harder to be blown away. An authentic depiction of the hell that is early adolescence might not be novel at this point, but I will say that this one still stood out to me a bit because it's a young boy this time, and it takes place in 2008. Hey, that little guy was me!  I don't think I have a ton to add. I thought the writing was a little questionable to start, but gets better. I thought all of the child actors were totally serviceable and the dialogue pretty authentic to what I remembered at that age, though they tend to mix a lot of 2008 slang with modern, gen-z slang.  Still, it's a good movie about navigating puppy love, appreciating your mom who is fighting her own battles, even...

⭐8/10 This was a show made just for me. Food, travel, and two of my favorite hobbits come together to make a wonderful, wholesome tv series. I have followed these two sporadically since Lord of the Rings, and I think they're pretty talented! They have pretty great chemistry after years and years of being friends, they're pretty funny and they're good with guests.  They explore some creative locations and I appreciated the in-depth look at the culture of the places they visit. For instance they go to Texas and so they go to a high school football game or a state fair and get fried stuff at concession stands. They go to Switzerland and visit places where they make cheese, go to remote Costa Rica and visit tortilla makers or coffee roasters. I think they do an awesome job of travelling off the beaten path and I think I learned some things watching this show. This isn't just going to the big cities and visiting the Michelin star restaurants, though they do that ...