One Good Point (Show) - Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along was a show I really didn't think I needed. I liked Kathryn Hahn in WandaVision, but didn't necessarily feel like her character needed her own standalone story. And the preview trailers looked fine, but I don't usually pursue a lot of witchy content. But I watch pretty much all Marvel content, so I was always gonna give it a shot.

The first episode was fantastic. It set the tone right away as a mystery, urging you to look for clues right away, a prompt that pays off in absolute spades by the end of the season. By the end of the second episode, you've got an eclectic coven of witches starting on a supernatural path, each with their own secrets, their own questions to answer, their own mysteries to unravel. And the main characters, Agatha and "Teen," have even more to reveal.

The show kind of reminds me of Loki, with a lot of really strong dialogue and meaningful character progression, characters who are absolutely on an arc. And it's got enough of a tie to compelling previous content that you care about what happens in it. 

And I cannot stress enough how well-crafted the payoffs are. There are like four different big reveals over the course of the season, with the earliest one happening in episode 5, and each of them is very rewarding. I'm doing my best not to spoil any of them, because they're really, really good.

One tiny ding is that the show does very occasionally suffer from "modern TV syndrome," where characters say explicitly what's in their minds, or they offer a somewhat unnatural line of dialogue to work some exposition or narrative information into the show. And they go a little slow-mo heavy in episode 8, which isn't the end of the world, but it just made me antsy for the show to get to the next beat.

Altogether though, the show was a rousing return to form for me. I'm eagerly anticipating the continuation (culmination?) of this story, and between this and Deadpool & Wolverine, I think Marvel is headed in the right direction. There's a TON of content dropping next year that has my interest piqued, like Daredevil: Born Again, Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four. If it picks up with the same strength that Agatha All Along sported, we just might be back in business, folks.

Feeling witchy? Click here to visit JustWatch and find out where you can feed that urge and watch Agatha All Along today!

One Good Point (Movie) - A Nightmare on Elm Street

Finally!

For something like thirty years I've been interested in watching this movie, despite my general resistance to horror films. The first time my interest was piqued was way back when I saw the associated Nintendo game mentioned in an issue of Nintendo Power. But that pre-dated my ventures into R-rated movies, and vastly pre-dated my ventures into horror movies. Now that I've finally opened myself up to the occasional fright night, it was well past time to check out A Nightmare on Elm Street.

And I liked it!

The premise is fairly cheesy, but that didn't bother me really. I think actually when it comes to horror movies, a cheesy premise is a bit of a comfort. The more realistic a horror film is, the more worried I get that it could possibly happen for real. Saw, for example, was a really discomforting experience.

But I also liked that the movie wasn't solely in the "scary realm" so to speak. I find that when an entire movie is portrayed as dangerous, it dampens the impact of the experience for me. It becomes just an anxiety-inducing movie, and not an interesting journey. This movie spent enough time in the daytime, at school, and interacting with people "outside" the danger to create a compelling balance for me.

The ending... well I'm not entirely sure what happened at the end. But I'm kind of okay with that. It's a horror movie with six million sequels; maybe there are more answers in future films. For now, I'm calling this a rousing success.

Feeling like a classic fright night yourself? Click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can stream this nightmare today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Get Out

IT'S HORROR WEEK!

Historically I haven't been much of a horror movie kind of guy. It's a little bit of an oddity, because Jurassic Park and Jaws definitely draw on horror elements, and they're two of my all-time favorite movies. But then I watched The Ring at some point, and I was like, why on earth would someone choose to do this to themselves?

For a while it was just monster movies, like Cloverfield (good) or Deep Blue Sea (decent). And then earlier this year I gave a shot to Anaconda (so, so bad). But Get Out has been a movie that seemed to cross into the mainstream to such an extent that it demanded being watched. Granted, some might say the same about the movie IT, but I'm in no rush to see that film. "Underground ghost clown" isn't the basis for anything fun I want to see.

My cousin Nick has been recommending it for years, and I finally caved in and watched it. And it's just fantastic. The main character feels so incredibly realistic, especially his relationship with his friend, fleshed out almost exclusively via phone calls. And look, I'm by no means an expert on the topic. But this feels genuinely like a movie written by Black writers, with Black characters in mind. So often you find Black characters in movies or shows that feel aggressively neutral, or painted as downright caricatures. By contrast, this movie felt so purely human and realistic.

The reveal is great, the characters are great, and the culmination is great. There's one cheesy line towards the end, which I won't spoil, in case you haven't seen the movie. But the rest of it is just an absolute treasure, and has got me ready to watch more Jordan Peele films ASAP.

If you haven't watched Get Out, you've got to click here ASAP and find out where you can stream it, and watch it. Now.

One Good Point (Movie) - Unbreakable

No, not Kimmy Schmidt. This is the M. Night Shyamalan film from 2000 starring Bruce Willis (hey, like I promised!) and Samuel L. Jackson. It's the first of a three-part "trilogy" that includes two more movies on my horizon: Split and Glass.

So how was the first entry in this saga? Well, let's just say that if I hadn't received such inspirational reviews of the second and third films, this might have been where my journey stopped.

The beginning of the movie is actually really well done. It introduces us to Willis' character, David Dunn, showing us that he's got some charm, that he's having marital trouble, and then sets off the story by putting him in a catastrophic train wreck as the sole survivor. But after that, Dunn becomes almost completely uninteresting and uncharismatic. Willis plays the role very similar to his role in The Sixth Sense, but that character was supposed to be a man literally haunted by the events of his life. This character should have some kind of personality. And I say that as someone who loves Captain America, admittedly one of the less flamboyant heroes. You gotta give me something.

Jackson's portrayal of Elijah Price is much more interesting, but that's how it goes with antagonists, right? That's how you knew he was the bad guy: he was eminently more watchable and compelling than Willis.

I think ultimately this movie suffered from the success of The Sixth Sense. It seems like Shyamalan "learned" too much from that movie, and employed character work and cinematography that wasn't quite right for this movie. But I trust the recommendations I've received enough that I'll give Split and Glass a shot.

One last thing. Just before the end credits, the movie does a freeze-frame and text-based post-script. "David Dunn led authorities to... Elijah Price is now..." etc. In a fictional, serious movie, this feels completely out of place. It makes sense in Remember The Titans, because you want to know the real world "whatever happened to..." about a number of characters. And it makes sense in like Animal House, because Animal House is an unserious movie. In this film, a serious dramatic but fictional story, it just feels strange. One more oddity in a movie full of less-than-exceptional quirks.

Wondering if I'm way off base? You can check out Unbreakable on your own! Click here to check out where you can stream it today on JustWatch.

One Good Point (Movie) - Looper

I'm generally a Bruce Willis fan. Die Hard was one of the first R-rated action movies I ever saw, and Die Hard: With a Vengeance was the first R-rated movie I ever saw in theaters. And there'll be another Bruce Willis movie in this feed shortly, so stay tuned!

Willis isn't quite the protagonist in this movie, though; that distinction goes to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays the younger version of Willis' character. The two characters are dealing with the consequences of a life of crime and time travel, and naturally are both cooperative and combative at different points in the movie. They both do a great job of acting, while some of the supporting roles (Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels specifically) are a bit less impressive.

The story is fairly straightforward, which is a positive in a time-travel movie; that shit can get weird in a hurry. That said, the story just didn't grab me the way I hoped that it would. It's a fine little suspense film, with a rewarding enough ending, but lacking in any of the big dramatic moments that makes a movie really sing for me. It kind of feels like the movie had a premise they liked, and they sort of tried to jam a full-sized story on top of it, and the fit is a little imperfect. Not bad, just not great... which feels like the story behind many of the films I've watched this year, but hey, that's how it goes, right? Most stuff is okay, some stuff is great, some stuff is terrible.

You're welcome, I just explained life.

If you'd like to watch Looper yourself but aren't sure what timeline you're in, I can't help you. But if you just need to know where it's streaming, click here to check out its entry on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Movie) - Sleepy Hollow

So for those of you who know me, you know I don't have a big horror background. I'm not into jump-scares at all; that's a sensation I'm perfectly happy to leave behind. But there are thrilling movies that appeal to me; Jurassic Park and Jaws are two of my all-time favorite films, and thrill and danger are core to both of those movies.

Sleepy Hollow offers some of the same sorts of vibes, albeit with a supernatural bend. You've got a strong cast of skilled actors playing lots of interesting characters, almost all of whom have secrets to hide. Johnny Depp is very entertaining, as always, and he plays the role of a skittish-yet-overconfident investigator to perfection. And though I'm generally not into supernatural horror, I enjoyed how they stretched it as long as they could to keep you unsure if it was truly a ghost story.

Overall it was a fun watch, one I'll definitely be happy to revisit from time to time, when I'm in a spooky mood but don't want to watch something new. Sleepy Hollow gets my Halloween seal of approval!

If you'd like to watch Sleepy Hollow but you don't know where you can stream it, have I got a deal for you! Click here to check out JustWatch, and they'll tell you what streaming/rental services have this movie!

One Good Point (Show) - Fallout, Season 1

It's kind of remarkable what happened in the span of a year. Last year, Bethesda released the long-awaited title Starfield, a new world by the creators of Morrowind, Skyrim, and (of most relevance here) Fallout. Just recently, the Borderlands movie came out, and was by all accounts a colossal failure (I haven't seen it yet).

And yet in between, a show about a video game world, an expansion of the lore from a Bethesda product came out, and it was fantastic.

I've only played the very beginning of the very first Fallout game, the old tactical isometric game from a million years ago, and then about an hour of Fallout 3 at my friend's house. Other than that, my exposure to Fallout has been exclusively through internet videos and memes, but even with that limited awareness, the show absolutely popped.

The characters are robust and dynamic, and the world is full of personality, danger, and excitement. Walton Goggins is tremendous as always, but maybe the strongest performance is by Ella Purnell, our optimistic and adventurous protagonist; we meet most of the surface world through her point of view, learning as we go along. The third protagonist is played by Aaron Moten, and he took the longest time for me to come around to. But by the end, he's as entertaining as any of them. Adding in some secondary characters played by Chris Parnell, Michael Emerson, Michael Rapaport, and many others, there's really entertainment around every turn.

The season of television asked a lot of questions, gave a lot of answers, and left enough unresolved that you absolutely must have a second season. And it will! Amazon announced that the show will be renewed for at least one more season, and I'm looking forward to more.

Fallout is an Amazon show, but just in case you might have other options down the line, here's a direct link to the show's entry on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Show) - Invincible, Season 2 Part 2

If you were worried that Invincible didn't have enough characters and storylines going on, don't worry. The delayed second half of season two offered even more complexity, with even more characters getting into even more hijinks. Was it good?

It was... okay.

I would say there are too many characters and happenings for my taste; the wide spread of content means that you might go a full episode or longer between story beats for a particular character. The finale's focus on Angstrom Levy, a character we'd seen for maybe 4 minutes all season, is the most glaring example of this. If you boiled the show down to the Viltrumites (who get shortchanged this season for the most part), two or three secondary characters, and a "monster of the week," I think you'd have a stronger show.

The other side of my frustration with this show comes from the delay. Season 1 debuted in March of 2021. Season two didn't release until the summer of 2023, and only the first four episodes were released; the last four didn't come down until March of 2024. That is simply too long a delay to preserve excitement, and especially frustrating to have such a delay inside the season. The show lost all momentum from Part 1 to Part 2.

Hopefully future seasons don't have such a delay, and are not split. The show suffered a lot because of it.

To find out where you can watch Invincible (all at the same time), click here to check its entry on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Show) - Echo, Season 1

Echo was a show I didn't really think we needed before I watched it, and then I watched it, and I still feel the same way. Story-wise, it serves to tie a little bit of content together between the old Daredevil show (which was phenomenal) and the upcoming series Daredevil: Born Again. I say that without knowing what the new show will be about, but it'll be about Kingpin, and that's the most interesting part of Echo.

But the action is often drawn out and also unbelievable, and the characters just aren't that compelling. Even Kingpin's character feels a little bit restrained. But we do get a glimpse of what might be to come in his future MCU presence, and that's reason for optimism.

My biggest frustration with Echo is that compelling. But when a show isn't very good and it's got a female or minority lead (or both, in this case), the conversation gets skewed by people's reactions to that fact. Sexist folks will say, "Marvel's focus on wokeness is ruining the MCU!" Anti-sexist people will praise the show for its wokeness, without acknowledging its flaws. And the public at large is left with a not-that-great show that people care way too much about.

Echo wasn't that great. It's not the end of the MCU, and it's not because it focused on a girl. Agatha All Along's success is hopefully proving the latter point.

I wouldn't exactly recommend it, but if you want to watch Echo on a streaming service, you can click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can do that.

One Good Point (Show) - What If?, Season 2

The first time I watched through the first season of What If?, I was not impressed. I was still in my post-Endgame haze when it came to Marvel content, and I wanted stuff to contribute to the "story at large." What If? didn't do that.

But, the second time I watched through, I found a lot of it entertaining. I think having a bit of distance and separation, knowing it wasn't going to be part of the greater story (not really, at least), I was able to just sit and have fun with the show. I also think that mentality has helped me to enjoy X-Men '97 and the amount we've seen thus far from Agatha All Along.

Season two of What If? benefits from the same adjustment of expectations, but it doesn't have quite the same level of charm as the first season. I found myself nodding off as the pace of the episodes felt designed to stretch a fairly small story into something longer, but not necessarily greater. It's not the worst watch in the world, and there are some highlights (the first episode basically puts Nebula into Blade Runner and it's fucking brilliant). Just do like I did, and temper your expectations.

What If? is a Marvel television show, and is probably available on Disney+. But just in case, you can click here to check JustWatch and see where it's streamable.

One Good Point (Movie) - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Okay, in case you're one of the four people who hasn't already teased me for not being 100% certain that this movie was a musical, get your yuks out now, sunshine. Yes, I saw the episode of The Office that features a Sweeney Todd performance. Yes, that's the only real exposure I've had to the content. Sue me.

Err, wait. Don't, don't sue me.

The film was alright, although this particular musical didn't resonate with me, though that's not necessarily uncommon when it comes to musicals. I'm sure for some people it's perfect. For me, it feels like a little too much time is spent inside these characters' heads, and not enough time is spent actually interacting with the other characters.

That said, Johnny Depp is great, Helena Bonham Carter is great, and it's always nice to find Alan Rickman again. And you can tell objectively that it's a good movie. It's well-executed and sharp, the music and settings give it a true sense of being a stage play brought to life on the big screen. Overall an enjoyable experience, if not an transcendent one.

PS: I'm trying to tighten up these posts, they had gotten a little out of hand there for a while. The whole premise was "one good point," as in, a quick blurb and then we're out. So, shorter posts forthcoming... we hope lol.

If you'd like to watch Sweeney Todd today but aren't sure where you can stream it, click here to go to JustWatch and find out!

One Good Point (Show) - Bonding, Season 2

I mentioned previously that I had watched Season 1 of Bonding last year, and enjoyed it thoroughly. The humor was sharp and clever, and the protagonists (Tiff and Pete) were a lot of fun, both individually and in tandem.

During season 2, the Pete storyline and character feel less relatable, and I found myself either not rooting for him, or actively rooting against him. His point of view and outlook came across a lot less sympathetic, and a lot more entitled. I have to admit though, it's entirely possible that my "straightness" is part of what hinders my ability to appreciate Pete's story. I'm sure there are people who found his experiences a lot more relatable, and felt more empathy for how he interacted with the world. 

But the rest of the season was just as good as the first. The humor stays pretty strong throughout, in a way that Harley Quinn had a bit of trouble with. Tiff is an interesting and complex character, and the whole BDSM scene is given a more substantial presence in the second season of the show. There's more variance in the types of D/s relationships that are portrayed, and Tiff especially has a few different forays into exploring improved sexual health. The second season felt like it was maybe a little more responsible and interested in engaging with human sexuality, and that felt like a logical pivot for this show.

I still love the format of 15-20 minute episodes, and although I kind of wish I had another 20 minutes per episode with these characters and ideas, you'd almost always rather have a show be too tight than too loose. Bonding feels like a show that has a thing it wants to say in each episode, it says that thing, and it immediately gets out upon saying it. I'd be happy to see more of it, but Netflix elected to cancel the series after the second season. And in truth, the ending of the second season felt crisp and complete. As the saying goes, part of the story is the end.

Want to watch Netflix's Bonding, but not sure where to find it? We'll set aside your inability to connect ideas in your mind, and offer you this direct link to the show on JustWatch, where you can see where to stream the show today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Darkman

I remember seeing commercials for Darkman ages ago, except I think they were commercials for the associated Nintendo game. I never played the game, nor did I watch the movie, until now!

Ehh.

Look, you can abide a certain amount of cheesiness or inconsistency from older movies (although Jaws is fucking tight). The film-making world of today offers different sensibilities, different styles, and obviously vastly improved CGI and effects options. Some movies age better than others, and that's understandable. But Darkman has a few other issues to go along with that.

First, the good. As Peyton Westlake, Liam Neeson does a good job, when given lines that sound like something a person might ever say. And I thought Frances McDormand was quite good as the love interest. I also liked the premise of the movie in general: a "superhero" but one who mostly follows the same laws of physics as everybody else, and a protagonist whose first instincts upon getting powers are A) check on the love of my life, and B) fuck up the people who fucked me up.

But the actual execution of the movie just doesn't land for me. Part of it is that I think I just don't like what Sam Raimi puts on the movie screen. I've watched a fair amount of his work, the best of which (according to other people) includes Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, and I just don't get it. I'm aware that other people like this content, but I just cannot get behind the dialogue in any of these films. It feels so janky and unnatural.

Watch this opening scene from Darkman. It's got five minutes of the most non-human conversation I've ever seen in my life. It's as if the script was written by aliens who are trying to approximate a human conversation, with all the believability of a goo monster writing lines.

The effects are old, and look old, but that's fine, that happens. And in the end, the actual beats of the story are satisfying, and the action is decent. I'm not explicitly upset that I watched the movie, which is a low bar, but hey, it's better than Anaconda.

Anaconda was so bad.

If you'd like to watch Darkman right now, and prove to yourself that Sam Raimi is a genius and Joe doesn't know what he's talking about, click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can stream it today!

One Good Point (Show) - 3 Body Problem, Season 1

Unlike a lot of people, I knew nothing about 3 Body Problem until it came down the pike. I saw it advertised on Netflix once it had been released, and I said oh okay, maybe I'll check this thing out... but probably not. Then I started to hear people talk about it like it's the next Game of Thrones (sometimes using that exact literal comparison), so I felt a bit more compelled to investigate.

One season in, it's a decent show. Game of Thrones, it ain't.

It's a nice little sci-fi show that becomes a massive sci-fi show, as it takes on an interesting idea about how we might encounter beings from another planet. I don't want to go too much into detail about the specifics of the show, because there are a lot of little (and sometimes very big) reveals that you don't want to have spoiled for you. There are some surprising deaths, and some pretty foreseeable deaths, and a couple of massive set pieces that are a spectacle to see.

The characters are... okay? So far I haven't been inspired by any of them, not really. I find that the overall premise is more interesting than the individual character arcs so far, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it puts a lot more pressure on the story. And the story is good, not great.

I will give it this, though. The first season ends with a lot of big moments and a lot of big questions, and it does a good job of piquing interest for future seasons. It's also got two actors who played two of my favorite side characters in the past decade: Liam Cunningham, who played Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones, and Benedict Wong, who played Wong in Doctor Strange (and subsequent MCU properties).

I'll watch more 3 Body Problem when there's more 3 Body Problem to watch. I'm interested to see where the story goes, particularly the Wallfacer idea. And I'm always interested to see where an alien story ends.

3 Body Problem is a Netflix series, so it's going to be on Netflix. But just in case you live in a weird land where up is down and Netflix is Paramount, click here to check JustWatch and find out for sure!

One Good Point (Movie) - Interstellar

I've heard for years about how good Interstellar was, from people whose movie opinions I respect. Not only that, these people told me that while yes it was an objectively good movie, I would like it specifically. That's a tall order, but from the right people, that's a recommendation you take to the bank (see Justified) (but NOT Justified: City Primeval).

So I finally watched the movie, and for the most part, I'd say their recommendations were...right on!

The movie gives us a near future with humanity on the brink of extinction, due to massive and permanent crop failures. Our story follows Matthew McConaughey's "Cooper" as a widowed father and an exceptional pilot who is called upon to attempt to find a suitable destination planet to which Earth's inhabitants can be transported to start anew. The bulk of the story follows Cooper and the rest of the crew as they explore, facing off against time, space, and inevitably, each other, in the pursuit of the ultimate goal of saving the human race.

The space adventure is excellent, probably the best non-combat space adventure I've seen since Apollo 13, one of my all-time favorite movies. The additional layer of Cooper's family relevance is what sets this movie apart, though. Cooper's relationship with his daughter Murph in particular is something that resonates throughout the film, despite their fairly limited in-person interactions. Every decision Cooper makes is colored by his desire to save the world for Murph, but also to get home to see Murph again. It's an emotional rollercoaster, and one that I wasn't totally prepared for, but was happy to experience.

One striking resemblance for this movie is to a movie that I actually did not enjoy very much at all: 2001: A Space Odyssey. But where 2001 dragged (for example, with a long orchestral sequence simply showing a variety of planetary bodies), Interstellar is able to offer exceptional visual effects while not feeling like you're stuck in a terrible sixth-grade music video project.

Finally, and perhaps completely predictably if you know my love of droids, I absolutely loved the robot characters in the movie. Both TARS and CASE offered interesting logistical considerations as well as the occasional lightness of humor to cut some of the tension. I would watch a whole movie of just Cooper and TARS yukking it up in the great unknown.

Want to watch Interstellar today? Click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can stream it right now!

One Good Point (Movie) - Dredd (2012)

I've always been a pretty big Karl Urban fan, as much as one can be a Karl Urban fan. I loved Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Eomer was a big part of that. My fantasy baseball team was named the Riders of Rohan for like, fifteen years.

So it's a bit surprising that it took this long for me to get around to watching this movie. It's a fairly straightforward action movie, where the no-nonsense Judge Dredd takes a rookie (Judge Anderson) under his wing for assessment. Things go sideways (of course; it's a movie), and Dredd and Anderson have to fight their way through wave after wave of murderous psychopaths. Lena Headey plays the primary criminal antagonist in the movie, and Wood Harris (another all-time favorite actor of mine) serves in a supporting role.

I enjoyed the movie a lot! I think one of the things I appreciated is that, while the setting is very interesting and potentially offers a robust world to explore, this movie knows what its mission is: to deliver big time action and highlight the titular character. Urban plays Dredd extremely well, as a by-the-book enforcer who also (at least to some extent) understands the complexities of enforcing law and dispensing justice in a near-futuristic dilapidated quasi-war zone. He's not sympathetic to those who break the law exactly, but takes a fairly pragmatic approach to dealing with nonviolent criminals.

I found the story believable enough, in a John Wick sort of way. The violence was great, the gore was appropriate, and Dredd's rapport with Anderson was humorous and endearing in a mentor/mentee sort of way. I never saw the original Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stallone, and apparently according to reviews across society, that's okay. This might be a situation where I don't go back and try to fill the gap in my movie-going history. I'm not saying that I for sure won't do it; you never know what might drop on TNT sometime when I'm stuck without internet. But I'm much more interested in a potential future Dredd project than going backward to the widely panned original.

I watched this movie on Prime Video. Where can you watch it today? Click here to go to JustWatch and find out!

One Good Point (Show) - The Queen's Gambit

You know, I don't know if this is a more recent development, but it seems like there are a lot more female protagonists on shows these days, specifically non-sitcoms. House of the Dragon, Arcane, Ahsoka, countless others. I guess maybe it's just a matter of how many non-sitcoms I watch, which was admittedly precious few when I was in middle school or high school, but still, this does seem like a golden age of women when it comes to entertainment content.

Anyways, Queen's Gambit is another female-led show, starring Anya Taylor-Joy. Her character Beth is orphaned at a young age and finds herself in an orphanage, where she meets a janitor who (reluctantly) teaches her to play chess. The show then follows her as she grows up, endures hardships, and becomes a prolific chess player.

None of this probably sounds particularly interesting, but the story and the characters make it a very enjoyable watch. The child version of Beth is the right balance of damaged and sharp, and I'm a sucker for any sort of wayward souls' home dynamic, a la Girl, Interrupted.

Taylor-Joy's Beth meanwhile is supremely watchable. She's funny, scathing, and complicated, and the way she interacts in a male-dominant world is incredibly compelling. The soundtrack kicks ass, the supporting characters are great, and the pacing in particular is fantastic. I never felt like I was lingering in any one spot for too long; even in the pauses during chess matches, the tension and the little details of the moment keep you in rapt attention.

It's a sports story in every sense, with the troubled origin story, unexpected mentor, nemeses turned allies, and naturally, a final clash against the Soviets. It's a great story from front to back, and I strongly recommend The Queen's Gambit, to any of the eleven people who still haven't seen it.

It's a Netflix original series, so you know where you're gonna be able to watch it, but nevertheless, here's a link to JustWatch, my favorite site for finding out where you can stream various content!

One Good Point (Movie) - The Flash

SPOILERS FOR THIS MOVIE BELOW. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE THIS EXACT MOVIE SPOILED FOR YOU, DO NOT READ FURTHER.

So I listen to a few podcasts that talk about movies and shows, most of them done by The Ringer. I enjoy the Midnight Boys, House of R, and The Big Picture. And basically everybody I listened to talk about The Flash was pretty quick to shut it down. There was a fair amount of anticipation for the movie, and almost everybody to a person was disappointed with the film. But, this was a solid reminder that not everybody likes or dislikes the same stuff.

Now don't get me wrong; there were some very big problems with the movie. The CGI ranged from decent to absolutely abysmal. I don't know what those things were that Barry was saving from the hospital nursery, but they were definitely not human babies. Some sort of gelatinous hypothetical human-slug hybrid, maybe. And the couple of "cameos" at the end of the film that were very plainly CGI inclusions were unnerving examples of the uncanny valley, and someone at some point ought to have put their foot down and stopped all that.

But that said, I actually enjoyed the film.

I'll be the first one to admit that I had big time nostalgia feels when we saw Michael Keaton's Batman on screen, and every needle drop of that old Batman theme song was effective. Sometimes I'm an easy target. But the adventure itself was also pretty decent, a classic superhero story of a hero becoming their own worst enemy. The movie didn't have a single over-arching villain, not exactly, but not every movie needs to follow the same exhausted formula. I liked the characters, liked the journey, and liked the destination.

I'm not sure if it was just the terrible CGI that turned everybody off to the movie, or if people were just predisposed to dislike the movie because of the many problematic encounters that Ezra Miller has had over the past few years, but I think The Flash was a solid film in the end. Certainly not the train wreck that I was led to believe it would be.

Click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can watch The Flash today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Pitch Perfect 2

NOTE: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PITCH PERFECT 2.

I really enjoyed Pitch Perfect. I like music, I like cover songs, and I like sports movies (and don't fool yourself; Pitch Perfect is essentially Hoosiers). Plus Anna Kendrick is both incredibly talented and eminently watchable. So, it follows that I would watch Pitch Perfect 2 at some point, if the opportunity presented itself.

And so it did.

Pitch Perfect 2 hits a lot of the same notes (haha, pun!) as the original, with a compelling primary story of teamwork and achievement, and secondary stories about coming-of-age, perception-vs-reality, and personal priorities versus expectations. It's all well-written and well-acted, with the trademark humor and needle drops that made the first one such a hit.

One thing I do sometimes is think about what sort of changes I might've made to a show or movie. I'm not sure if it's such a great habit all the time, but someday maybe I'll put forward all the changes I would've made to the last two seasons of Game of Thrones, and you can tell me if it wouldn't have vastly improved that monstrosity.

Anywho, here comes the spoilers!

I thought the ending of Pitch Perfect 2 was good, but in kind of a cheesy, classic sports movie (see?) way.  The Bellas come out victorious as world champions, with a rousing rendition of an original composition, bringing a number of past Bellas onto the stage for the end of the performance. Lovely.

But, what if...

The Bellas finish with the highest score, and the crowd delights in the performance's combination of originality and nostalgia. However, because the performance included singers who are not current members of the Bellas, the team is disqualified, and the Bellas must disband for good. It puts a tight bow on this chapter of these characters, and also gives immediate prominence to Hailee Steinfeld's character Emily as the only? underclassman, and the new steward of the Bellas' acapella legacy. On top of all of that, it's not what people would expect from a sports movie (I'm committed to this bit), so it would be a fun twist.

Anyways, if you've read all the way down here, one more note. There's a scene where Chloe and Beca are laying super close to each other late at night, and Chloe tells Beca she wishes she had done more experimenting in college. There's a whole other Pitch Perfect movie that I would watch the hell out of that starts right at that moment.

Ahem. Anywho, fun movie!

If you'd like to watch Pitch Perfect 2 right now, click here to see where you can stream it on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Movie) - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I'd heard years and years ago about how this movie was a calamity, and the specific reason that most people brought up was the lack of realism about the ability to survive a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. While I can't speak to whether or not that's particularly realistic, I also am not too sure about the realism of the Ark of the Covenant burning away the bodies of the unworthy, or the realism of a hundreds of years old Templar protecting the Holy Grail.

My point being, I don't come to Indiana Jones for aggressive realism. I come here for fun, and that's the most important meter for measuring the quality of this particular movie. So, was Crystal Skull fun?

Yes!

While I'm not particularly sold on Shia LaBeouf as "the next generation of Indiana Jones," the movie overall is a success. It's got the same classic framework of pursuing some legendary treasure, assorted unsavory foreign authoritarian regimes (Soviet-era Russians this time) pursuing the treasure with less discretion, and investigating a combination of urban and wilderness environs in pursuit of clues.

For me, the first 40-45 minutes of the movie were absolutely top-notch Indiana Jones content. Harrison Ford's performance is pristine, purely Indy, and every supporting character, scene setting, and line of dialogue hits just exactly right. LaBeouf's character falls a little flat for me personally (in a Marty McFly sort of way), but not so much that it makes the movie unwatchable. And the film has the right number of callbacks to give you some nostalgia bumps without falling completely into "he said the thing!" territory.

Watching the movie also reminded me just how much fun a good Indiana Jones story can be. So in the time since I watched it, I've also re-watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I'm fully ready to tune in for Dial of Destiny soon. Who knows, maybe that'll be one of the additional movie reviews I'll write up before the end of the year?

If you've been waiting around forever like I have but want to finally watch Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can stream it today!