February Media Diet

We're doing away with subheads. If you can't figure out what's a book vs. movie vs. streaming show, ask me.  

Past Lives - Apple TV | Happy to cross this Oscar Best Picture nominee off the list, but I don’t think it has a chance of winning. A moving story though, told beautifully often without dialogue, about how life unspools as a series of choices.

Killers of the Flower Moon - Apple TV | Found 3.5 hours to watch this Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio that’s sure to win an armful of Oscars. Sure, it could have been trimmed an hour in the editing room, but it didn’t feel bloated. The cinematography is gorgeous, and the story — about America’s inhumanity to the people who lived off the land before the white man arrived  — is compelling.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar - Netflix | Carey heard about this Oscar-nominated live action short by Wes Anderson, based on the Roald Dahl book and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, so we gave it 45 minutes of our time. Not bad as Anderson films go, but I don’t know why his characters must always talk so fast. I guess to finish the movie in under an hour. Anyway, a nice message about the true meaning of wealth.  

Mr. & Mrs. Smith, S1 - Amazon Prime | Donald Glover and Maya Erskine star as the title characters, loosely based on the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie movie from 2005. This 8-ep series is better, giving the actors more time to live in the characters, who are thrown together as a fake couple working as assassins for a shadowy entity they only interact with via text messages. It’s played more for laughs than thrills, but has a lot to say about what makes a relationship authentic.

The Old Man in the Pool - Netflix | Wanted to watch this for awhile and found the time when visiting the Gilmores. Quite a few jokes were spoiled by the interview with comic Mike Birbiglia I heard on the “Smartless”podcast, but I was surprised by just how severely tempered the jokes were by true reflections on mortality.

This Disaster Loves You by Richard Roper | British author who loves stories about sad sacks who turn their lives around tells a tale about an early middle-aged pub owner whose wife went missing seven years ago. When someone starts posting online travel reviews that sound like her, he hits the road to try and find out what the hell happened, but ends up on his own journey of self-discovery, natch. | My AP review.

Margot’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe | Optioned as an Apple TV series starring Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman before it even publishes in June, this is one wild novel. Margot gets knocked up at 19 by her college professor, has a baby, drops out of school, and discovers OnlyFans, where she flashes herself for money and rates the d*** pics that subscribers send her, giving them each a Pokémon doppelgänger. Oh, and her father is a famous professional wrestler, now retired, who advises her on how to create a good narrative for her OnlyFans. Wild, I tell ya.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher | Picked up this slim $5 book from Barnes & Noble for Lincoln’s Christmas stocking, but he’s a busy high school junior and hasn’t read it yet. Didn’t realize it’s a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” but that’s OK, because I barely remembered the original. Pretty creepy stuff, it tuns out, involving mad hares, fungi, and bodily possession.