What I'm Watching: Saltburn, Next Goal Wins, Fargo, and More

Barry Keoghan, Saltburn, Amazon MGM

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I watched, read, and wrote about this week:

The shows:

• I caught up on Boots Riley’s Prime Video series I’m A Virgo this week, and can safely say it’s a total trip in the best way. Riley is one of a small handful of filmmakers who is very open about using his art as a tool towards mobilizing activists, and this hyper-creative, deeply strange anti-capitalist comedy about a teenaged giant coming of age in Oakland is no exception. Personally, I like this visually striking, well-acted show (Jharrel Jerome and Walton Goggins are both aces) better than Riley’s directorial debut Sorry To Bother You, though it does occupy a similarly surreal and sharply satirical space. You will almost certainly come away from this one thinking “WTF?” but I think that’s a good thing.
• I’m not as enamored with the fifth season of Noah Hawley’s Fargo as most of my critic friends, it seems. I screened the first six episodes, and while I love watching Juno Temple’s paranoid scrapper character decking her house out with deadly Home Alone-style traps, I think the show’s political commentary is painfully on the nose. This season interestingly explores the idea of “truth” being insisted upon instead of proven – characters here repeat lies emphatically and dare others to deny their self-built realities – but it also less-interestingly incorporates real political talking points that ring utterly false falling from the mouths of Jon Hamm, Joe Keery, and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s characters. The action and acting are great, the scripts not so much.
• I’m intrigued by another FX show, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s (AKA the pair behind Netflix’s dreamy short-lived series The OA) A Murder at the End of the World. I’ve so far only caught the first couple episodes of the murder mystery, which stars Clive Owen and The Crown breakout Emma Corrin, but it’s certainly got me entranced – if not completely sold yet. As the title advertises, the show’s about a death taking place in a snowy, remote locale (at Owen’s character’s swanky mansion) and one true crime author’s quest to figure out what happened. There’s plenty to be intrigued about here, but the show’s pace – two timelines unfold oh-so-slowly across hour-plus episodes – leaves something to be desired.

The movies:

• I tried to tune out the discourse surrounding Saltburn so I could watch it without getting spoiled this week, and that turned out to be a great decision. Both of writer-director Emerald Fennell’s previous high-profile works – the rape revenge movie Promising Young Woman and season 2 of Killing Eve – incensed me in deep and somewhat personal ways, so I expected to hate her latest. Yet this gorgeous, lurid thriller about obsession, wealth, and incurable pettiness turned out to be exactly my cup of poison tea. There are a half-dozen moments in this movie that exist seemingly just to be talked about, but is that a bad thing? It’s one part Talented Mr. Ripley, one part Cruel Intentions, one part twisted inversion of Jane Austen, and it’s an entirely exhilarating, unpredictable watch.
• I put off watching Talk To Me for ages knowing the Australia-set possession flick would scare the pants off me, but I finally felt ready today (in broad daylight, with a friend on speed dial, of course). People are right to call this movie brutal and relentless, but I appreciate that it also captures so many of the icky and sad elements of occult obsession – denial of grief, collective overconfidence – that most ghost story movies skim past. I also liked that it didn’t overstay its welcome. Get in, get out, and freak everyone the hell out: that’s the Talk To Me promise.
• When I was visiting my mom, she put on a movie called To Catch A Killer (starring Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn) that was not overtly bad, but was very sad and dark and long and had more mass shooting scenes in it than I think any movie needs.
• I’ve been trying to decide if I would’ve liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem as a kid, and I really don’t know. I like it okay as an adult, though. The new spin on a nostalgic franchise has a lot to offer, including an endearing kid cast and a banging soundtrack. On the other hand, its animation was hit-or-miss for me, and I felt like its script mistook ubiquitous pop culture references for real jokes and character development. Fun enough, but not my favorite.
• As an erstwhile Taika Waititi fan, I’m bummed to say that Next Goal Wins was definitely a mixed bag for me. It had some high highs (the talented and funny Polynesian supporting cast, an ending that undeniably came together well) but its lows (a dumb script, a protagonist with incoherent characterization) were also frustratingly low.

Odds and ends:

• If you’ve been waiting with bated breath to read my full-length pan of The Curse, now’s your chance.
• Here’s my full review of The Crown’s final season, while we’re at it.
• I’m not done reading Hanif Abdurraqib’s phenomenal music and culture essay book They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us yet, but I tore through half of it on a plane this week and fully wept my way through his meditation on The Black Parade while listening to The Black Parade. There’s something fitting about the fact that the first book I’ve been featured in opens with an essay from Abdurraqib himself – and it’s about crying on planes. I was profoundly touched by this sobfest, so I might write more about it later, but for now, please get right with your god and go check out this man’s amazing work.
• I’ve been meaning to congratulate the winners of the recent Critics Choice Documentary Awards, some of which I voted for! I’m especially happy to see American Symphony and Telemarketers, both of which I’ve hyped in past newsletters, take home some prizes.
• I fell for some nostalgia bait this week by listening to a few episodes of Ned’s Declassified Podcast Survival Guide, a chaotic but incredibly frank retrospective from the former child stars behind one of my favorite Nickelodeon shows. It’s kind of astonishing how open these folks are about the highs and lows of growing up in Hollywood, and while I think the co-hosts spend too much time giving out one-size-fits-all life advice, it’s still nice to hear about what they’ve made it through.
• I got to see comedian Josh Thomas live this past week, so it’s as good a time as any to remind you all that his show Everything’s Gonna Be Okay is great!

That’s all she wrote this week, folks. I had a great time visiting with family and friends this past week, and am nervous to return to my typical neurotic headspace now that I’m back home, so here’s hoping this next week goes easy on us all. As always, drop me a line if you’d like and let me know what you’ve been watching, reading, listening to, or loving.