I’ve come to hate reality TV, and by now I’m about half sick of cooking shows. So I’m trying to decide why I’m such a big fan of “The Great British Baking Show.” I’d say it was the British accents, for which I’m a sucker — but then Gordon Ramsay has one and his over-bleeped culinary combats (in their endless iterations) have grown tiresome. I think it’s […]
A classic and a clunker
Hulu finally got all the “Seinfeld” episodes. For the past week I’ve been watching a couple at a time, grazing through the seasons in hopes of finding one I may have missed. I’m starting to think I didn’t miss any — except for the notorious finale, which I still haven’t seen, lo, these 17 years later. That’s OK. I don’t mind Seinfeld reruns. Some of these episodes […]
‘Blue Ruin’ rules
Just when you conclude that the Netflix movie catalog really is a steaming pile of two-star manure, you stumble across a gem. That’s what I discovered tonight in “Blue Ruin,” a taut, lean revenge thriller that defies everything you might expect from this sort of film. For starters, it stars nobody you’ve ever heard of, and the protagonist is about as far from Liam Neeson as you […]
Hancock, we hardly knew ye
Yesterday I sent the movie Hancock back to Netflix unwatched. Sorry, Will. But I’ve had it laying around here for about a month and the time just never seemed right to spend two hours with a surly superhero. It appears Knadler’s Law applies to Netflix movies the same way it applies to things decomposing in the refrigerator: They never seem more attractive the next day. You think […]