Hi friends,
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts on the new format. It’s been great hearing from you as we continue to fine-tune these changes.
Onto movie and TV news: a lot of new releases this week, both streaming and in theaters! It seems like platforms everywhere are bringing out the big guns as we get into the thick of summer. I tried my best to be brief here, but there’s a lot to choose from at the moment, so watch out for more recs in the following weeks.
I hope you have a good weekend!
OUR TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK
Love & Anarchy
Season 2 is new on Netflix 🍅 rating: 100%
The latest season of Swedish workplace rom-com Love & Anarchy is our top TV show this week. It’s a raunchy and poignant series that mainly follows Sofie (Ida Engvoll ), a middle-aged consultant whose steady, predictable life is forever changed when she befriends the office temp, Max (Björn Mosten).
Sofie and Max take turns daring each other to do unconventional things in public, from walking backward at work to role paying at a function, and what begins as a thrill-seeking exploit soon evolves into a serious relationship that has them and their colleagues questioning their bigger ambitions and desires in life.
If you want to catch up on the first part of the series, don’t fret: both season one and two are only eight episodes long, with each episode running at just 30 minutes. An easy and worthwhile binge!
OUR TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
New on Netflix 🍅 rating: 100%
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, Bhutan’s official entry for the 2020 Oscars, is a gently-paced and gorgeous film set in the northern part of the Himalayan mountains.
It centers on Ugyen, a city boy who dreams of migrating to Australia one day. Despite his high hopes, he’s sent instead to Lunana (population: 100), where he’s assigned to teach at the most remote school in the world. He does his job reluctantly at first but soon finds himself at the other end of the lesson, being taught by his friendly students crucial lessons about life.
As someone who also often wonders about emigrating from the motherland, this recommendation is a bit more personal than the others. Lunana is a great watch regardless of your background, but it’s especially recommended to anyone who has or is going through that same push-and-pull of wanting to stay and serve your country or leave it and actually, you know, live.
Top picks outside of Netflix and Amazon Prime
New on Apple TV+ is this year’s Sundance favorite, Cha Cha Real Smooth. Cooper Raiff produces, writes, directs, and stars in this affecting, feel-good indie about a young man fresh out of college. He’s not super eager to have his entire life planned out just yet, but he also knows (and wants to make known) that he has a true knack for uplifting the people around him. Two of his recipients are a young mother and her daughter, with whom he strikes up an unlikely but lovely friendship. Cha Cha Real Smooth is as feel-good as it can get, certainly a delightful watch for the weekend.
Dark Winds is the latest release on AMC+. Even just two episodes in (they’re released weekly), you can already tell this isn’t your typical police procedural. Spotlighting Native-American stories, the atmospheric thriller follows two officers who investigate a series of odd crimes in their Navajo town and face their own demons in the process. The series is co-produced by George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones) and Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).
New titles worth your time
Notable fresh arrivals on Netflix include Closet Monster, a Canadian drama that uses elements of fantasy and body horror to tell the story of a closeted teen, and The Martha Mitchell Effect, a new documentary that profiles the Watergate whistleblower whom the psychological process (very similar to gas lighting) is named after.
Also new on the streamer are the political satire Vice, the Fred Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, and the sixth and final season of the British post-war series Peaky Blinders.
Over at Amazon Prime, blockbusters No Time To Die (featuring Craig Daniels’ final turn as James Bond) and The Wolf Of Wall Street (the Leonardo DiCaprio meme machine) are new on the platform.
Great titles that will soon expire
Still on Amazon Prime, the beloved family sitcom Life In Pieces is leaving the platform on June 20. On June 22, Pawn Sacrifice, a biopic about chess player Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire), expires as well.
No notable titles are expiring on Netflix.
That’s all for this week. This edition of the newsletter will be back on Friday, June 24.
Until then,
Renee