What I'm Watching: Derry Girls, The Menu, Women Talking, and More

Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Derry Girls, Channel 4 / Netflix

Here’s what I watched this week, and what I thought about it.

The shows:

• After waiting ages for the third season of the wonderful Irish coming-of-age comedy Derry Girls, I purposely put off finishing the series for months because I dreaded saying goodbye to the girls. I finally binged the last episodes on Netflix this week, and they were both screamingly funny (as usual) and ultimately very touching in the way the Troubles-set series often is. Lisa McGee is clearly a hell of a visual memoirist, and we’re lucky to have been able to see her tell her story – and the story of Northern Ireland’s fraught recent history – in such a delightful and casually profound way.
• I checked out the first two episodes of the true-crime series Welcome to Chippendales this week, and honestly didn’t feel much about it at all. I know the story is interesting and I enjoy Kumail Nanjiani, so I’ll stick with it, but I’ve reached some sort of mental and moral (spiritual?) saturation point for true crime limited series this year. Personally, for me, it takes a pretty high level of quality for these shows to justify their own existence at this point. We’ll see if this one gets there.
• I’m still burning through some stand-up specials. Hasan Minhaj’s The King’s Jester (on Netflix) is wild – it’s as much a funny-but-harrowing real-life political thriller explained on stage as it is a comedy hour.
• The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, on Disney+, is perfectly alright if you’re into that sort of thing.

The movies:

• Thanksgiving week is “get dozens of award season screeners all at once” week for me, so I’m finally burning through a bunch of the movies I missed this year. My favorite so far is Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, a beautiful, frank, and healing film about sex, intimacy, and aging. Emma Thompson gives one of the best performances of her career and Daryl McCormack is a total star. I’ll be recommending this one to pretty much everyone I know for the foreseeable future. Catch it on Hulu!
• Women Talking is another incredibly powerful film, in a totally different way. On the surface, Sarah Polley’s somber, loquacious drama is about a group of Mennonite women discussing whether or not they should leave their homes and husbands after discovering a pattern of horrific abuse. Just below the surface, though, it’s a stunning allegorical text that pulls together elements of feminist history and theory, religious doctrine, and theatrical storytelling to craft a brave and vital blueprint for our times.
• Guillermo del Toro’s long-anticipated stop-motion version of Pinocchio is as gorgeous, playful, and heartfelt as you’d expect. It has whimsy and darkness in nearly equal measure and a climax that I found unexpectedly gutting.
• The totally made-up Weird Al biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a true, quality parody the likes of which it feels like we haven’t seen in years. The film, which you can find on The Roku Channel, is so funny and so silly and so purposely, delightfully stupid. It’s also densely packed with jokes and musical Easter eggs that reward a close watch.
• The fine dining horror flick The Menu is a wild, entertaining ride, the sort that makes for a great theatrical experience. While watching, I sometimes wished it had threaded the needle of its own ideology and message a little more precisely, but it still has lots of sharply funny moments and it’s all-around original in a way that I appreciate.
• I finally caught up with Pearl, and unfortunately, I continue to feel lukewarm about Ti West’s ongoing horror trilogy. Mia Goth is great in the surprise prequel to this spring’s hit X, but I didn’t connect very strongly with either movie beyond a general appreciation for their striking technical elements and Goth’s performances.
• It’s been a weird week for me horror-wise, as Shudder’s livestream haunted house film Deadstream also wasn’t particularly my jam (my tolerance for the main character was nonexistent). Most of my horror-loving pals really enjoyed it, though, and I’m fine being in the minority on this one as I think low-budget original horror deserves all the love.
• Despite mentioning it at the end of last week’s round-up, I didn’t actually watch Tár yet! I just got AMC A-List again for the first time in several months and am luxuriating in my ability to cancel tickets when I feel like sleeping instead of going out, which is honestly most of the time.

Odds and ends:

• Last week I gave my quick take on Netflix’s Wednesday, but at the time my full review hadn’t been posted yet: here it is!
• I’ve been writing the column Episodes at Film School Rejects for a few years now, doing a deep dive spotlight on a different groundbreaking or memorable episode of television each month. This month, I broke my own personal rules about recency bias to write about the stunning optimism of what will surely go down in history as one of this year’s best hours: the series finale of Better Call Saul.
• I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s Seinfeldia, and after a year’s worth of terrible reader’s block, I’m completely absorbed by it. As the title implies, it’s a non-fiction book about the making of Seinfeld. It’s a quick read that flows easily and gives great insight into the endlessly unorthodox creative process that led to the sitcom masterpiece.
• Everyone I know is playing Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet, but I’ve had two other Pokémon games sitting untouched in my Switch for months now, so I’m finally forcing myself to catch up on Pokémon Legends: Arceus instead. I’m not a big gamer (the last non-app Pokémon game I played at length before this was Sapphire, which came out 20 years ago), so I keep getting distracted from the main plot by side quests and self-imposed Pokédex goals. Still, Pokémon is comforting to me in the best way, and it’s a very fun – if somewhat aimlessly designed – game.

How about y’all? Catch any cute Pokémon lately? Comment and let me know what you’ve been reading, watching, playing, or listening to — and stay tuned for some fun year-end posts in December!