Obliterated
SimilarFlorida Man, Lupin,
Watch afterAhsoka, Gen V, Reacher,
Star Trek: Picard The Wheel of Time, True Detective,
Netflix’s action-comedy is deadly short on both.
There’s something undeniably attractive about the premise of Obliterated. A highly skilled team of soldiers, spies, bomb experts, and tech geniuses stop on nuclear bomb detonation in the heart of Las Vegas and fully celebrate their victory. And by fully celebrate, we mean FULLY. Drugs, alcohol, exotic animals, hundreds of guests, plenty of sex toys, and so on. Then they wake in the morning to find their mission wasn’t as successful as they thought, and now they have no choice but to try and save the day in various stages of loaded and hungover.
Sadly, miles exist between premise and execution. Think the difference between visiting the Bellagio in Vegas and the Tropicana in Atlantic City. Then double it. Maybe triple it. Put it another way, Obliterated is bad. Very bad. Continue Reading →
Obsession
Watch afterBEEF Chucky, Citadel, From, Ratched,
The Mandalorian The Night Agent, The Sandman, The White Lotus,
Certain events dig so deep into our culture that they define many subsequent examples of the form. Watergate has led to decades of any possibly notable scandal receiving a -gate suffix. Any British band with pop-rock sensibilities often spends a year or two followed by the question, “the next Beatles?”. And, currently, any erotic thriller with a hint of BDSM flavor gains the tag “the new Fifty Shades of Grey.” For a brief time, 365 Days, a Polish film brought to wider audiences thanks to Netflix, lived under that banner. Now the streaming service is giving it another shot with the four-part series Obsession. Continue Reading →
Transatlantic
GenreDrama War & Politics,
While Anna Winger’s new series Transatlantic is visually and textually lush, it opens a stark portrayal of the refugee experience. It’s painful, watching as they struggle with the terrain, carrying everything they have in their arms. You hear every labored breath, see every sweat stain. This long opening sequence sets the tone for the rest of the seven-part series–it isn’t glamorous or glossy, just beautifully filtered misery, fear, and hope. Continue Reading →