7/10
in this short series, momofuku restaurant group founder david chang eats his way through a different city with a different celebrity pal in each episode. he's no bourdain, to be sure, but i enjoyed his easy rapport with the likes of chrissy teigen and kate mckinnon. my favorite, however, was the first ep, in which he gets delightfully baked with seth rogen and they wander around vancouver.
let it snow
3/10
i know this is a fairly controversial stance to take, but about 95% of the cheesy YA original movies on netflix are...just really not any good, folks. and yet, i continue to keep hope alive, watching and trying my best to get into them as each one comes out—because i do love a good cheesy YA movie! in let it snow, the cringe is almost unbearable. there are like three different plotlines to follow, all centering around a blizzard that hits a small town at christmas time. and one of them involves a pop star who gets stranded there, which was very unnecessary and dumb. like, joan cusack plays a bizarre character known only as "tin foil woman." sure, okay. whatever. it's bland, it's soulless, and i just really didn't get it at all. come to think of it, it's exactly how i feel about the 1975...
echo in the canyon
8/10
really, really enjoyed this documentary about the laurel canyon/LA music scene in the '60s. jakob dylan (sidenote: when did he get SO ATTRACTIVE? i don't remember being so taken with him as a young'n) interviews a bunch of revered musicians, including tom petty, ringo starr, and stephen stills, about the creative and artistic energy of that time. there are a lot of behind the scenes stories that are super interesting, too. a must-watch, feel-good movie for music fans, IMO.
tales of the city
7/10
blew through this miniseries last summer, which was based on the books by armistead maupin. set in san francisco, it features a lot of big names like ellen page, laura linney, and olympia dukakis as a bunch of intertwined friends, relatives, lovers, and neighbors dealing with lots of drama and mystery. it was admittedly a bit difficult to keep track of what was happening at points due to all of the characters, but overall, it was a nice lil' show.
20th century women
6/10
considering that this is an A24 indie movie set in 1979 and starring greta gerwig, i SHOULD have loved it more than i did. it was fine enough, but really dragged on at many points and could have been much shorter. there's a lot going on, including explorations of sexuality, feminism, and tense family dynamics, so the plot is pretty meandering. i loved the references to the punk music scene of the late '70s and there were some unexpected plot twists that were pretty intriguing. a slight bit sleepy for my taste, though.
holiday in the wild
3/10
i thought that maaaaybe, just maaaybe, since this was not a *cheesy YA* netflix original movie—and because it stars rob lowe and kristin davis—it might be good. it was not. the gist is that kristin davis' character goes on a honeymoon by herself to africa after her fiance breaks off their engagement, she meets rob lowe, they rescue an elephant(?) and the rest is basically just safari porn masquerading as a rom-com. i wasn't invested in the characters in the slightest, and "this isn't about us. this is about the elephants." is an actual line delivered straight-faced by rob lowe. oof.
