What I'm Watching: Only Murders In The Building, The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Finale, Notorious, And More

Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Notorious, RKO Radio Pictures

Here’s the rundown on everything I watched, read, and wrote about this week:

The shows:

• I know this might be a hot take, but I’m actually not too keen on the new season of Only Murders In The Building. It seems like this show got grandfathered into permanent “it’s great!” territory but it’s slipped in quality in the rush to make follow-up seasons. While the new season has some great guest stars (Meryl Streep! Paul Rudd!) and Martin Short is as funny as ever, it mystery seems somewhat shoddily assembled and entire clues and suspects are ignored for episodes on end just to draw things out. Full review still to come, since I got wildly behind on some things this month.

The movies:

• Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are two of the most singular, interesting filmmakers working in the horror/sci-fi space today, and their latest movie, Something In The Dirt, is no exception. Framed as a documentary about two neighbors who start witnessing strange phenomena in their LA apartment complex – and a documentary about how that documentary went wrong – the movie evolves into a trippy, clever, labyrinthine take on the addictive qualities of conspiratorial thinking and the ways in which people choose to analyze and ignore information. This film is timely as hell, and it’s not actually overtly scary, so I definitely recommend it even for non-horror fans.
• It was Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday yesterday, and even though the guy was a total tool, he was also a master filmmaker, so I decided to throw on a new-to-me Hitch. My biggest blindspot in his filmography was Notorious, a majorly beloved noir headed up by Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. Both actors were aces, but there’s a vindictive undercurrent to this movie that I didn’t expect (though I should have…see: Hitch being a total tool) or particularly enjoy. On first watch, it’s not top-tier Hitchcock for me, but he’s a filmmaker whose works always grow richer the more I read about them, so if anyone has recs for good writing on Notorious, throw them my way!

Odds and ends:

• Here’s a whole backlog of my recent reviews from Film School Rejects: Good Omens, Heartstopper, and Reservation Dogs. Spare a click if ya can!
• Did you absolutely love the finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? If not, do you hate joy? Over at Slashfilm, I wrote about why its central surprise was such a delight to me. Hint: it’s partly because Paramount actually let a big Trek moment be a surprise for once.
• I realize I’ve never publicly weighed in on The Bear’s Carmy/Sydney shipping conversation, so I piggybacked off a recent interview with one of the show’s showrunners to work out some feelings on the pairing.
• This Variety cover story piece about Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp coming out is very tender and beautiful and it made me cry more than once.
• I also really dug this Time Magazine deep dive that contextualizes the “wholesome romance” novel trend within a complicated cultural, political, and literary landscape. A great read if you’ve been wondering why every romance that’s a bestseller feels a lot lower stakes than the ones you were reading a decade ago.
• Anyone who has a young kid in school or an interest in education would benefit from checking out the American Public Media podcast Sold A Story, an investigative deep dive into exactly where schools went so wrong when it comes to teaching kids to read. You’d think this would be a pretty opaque problem, but there’s actually a wildly simple reason so many kids can barely read these days, and this podcast gets to the bottom of it with clear and rigorous reporting.
• If you’re WGA or SAG-AFTRA member or have been standing in solidarity with the two groups on strike, let this video WGA West shared for its 100th day on the picket line give you the energy to keep up the important, exhausting work that the whole industry will thank you for when all’s said and done. Corporate greed won’t win this thing!

And if you’re wondering why this newsletter’s hitting your inbox late, it’s for a very silly reason: I got too tired to finish watching Something In The Dirt last night but didn’t want to send this out until I did because it’s just that good.

These next few newsletters may come at wonky times as well since I’ll be working on them while I travel. In the meantime, drop me a line and tell me what you’ve been into lately!