What I'm Watching: Willow, The Fabelmans, Smile, and More

Sosie Bacon, Smile, Paramount Pictures

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

The shows:

• The first season of Willow just debuted on Disney+, and while I have exactly zero attachment to the original movie and tend to approach anything coming from Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilm with a healthy dose of skepticism, I actually think I love this show? You can read my full review for Film School Rejects here, but in short, it’s the kind of romantic, funny adventure saga that’s a little saucy for kids and a little goofy for adults – in the best way. It reminds me of a certain brand of irreverent and very ‘90s crowd-pleasers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Mummy that I had figured was extinct for good.
• This was mostly a movie week for me, but I took a break to catch up on the most recent episodes of Abbott Elementary. It’s been years since I’ve seen a network show catch on as quickly and wholeheartedly as this one, and I’m so happy to see it growing even more in its second season. I was admittedly worried that the 22-episode season two order could put a strain on the scripts, but this latest batch of episodes is as sweet and funny as ever.

The movies:

• I finally caught up on Steven Spielberg’s fictionalized autobiography The Fabelmans this week, and am glad to report that I was way more into it than I thought I would be based on those saccharine commercials. It has an at times frustratingly nostalgic sheen to it, but it also has a lot of clear-eyed truth, and it blends the two in a way that’s quite interesting and makes total sense for the story at hand. The delightful last shot ties a bow on the whole thing.
• I also really enjoyed Fire Island, a movie I’ve been saving for a rainy day since its debut this summer. This gay vacation rom-com is a Pride & Prejudice redux, and I was admittedly not as sold on the Mr. Darcy character as I needed to be in order to well and truly fall for the film. But I still adored so much of it, from the charming cast (Bowen! Joel Kim Booster!) to the warts-and-all exploration of queer hierarchies.
• Noah Baumbach’s latest, White Noise, is a strange and entertaining (if a little shapeless) satire that mostly made me want to read the Don DeLillo book on which it’s based. Baumbach’s popular subjects (east coast white guy academics and artists who are riddled with ennui) aren’t always my cup of tea, so I also appreciate that they get to be the butt of the joke here.
• I’m not as sure where I land on The Banshees of Inisherin. Martin McDonagh’s latest tragedy feels, perhaps appropriately, like the sort of folk tale-esque story you’d hear in a bar, about two guys who someone there says he used to know. Its bone-deep melancholy ultimately got its hooks in me, but a slow-burn mix between absurdity and mundanity kept me at arm’s length for much of the movie, and I thought the war metaphor was a bit on the nose. Still, the film’s deep emotion and two great performances managed to sneak up on me by the end.
• I’d been putting off watching Smile until I got to check it out with one of my favorite horror-loving pals. We both dug what the movie was trying to do, and I thought it had some good scares (those anticipatory setups were intense!) and truly freaky imagery, but we were frustrated that the script forfeited a meaningful ending for a clichéd one.

Odds and ends:

• I covered a preview event for the wild upcoming movie Cocaine Bear for /Film this week and got to hear Elizabeth Banks talk all about Cokey the bear. The first trailer for the movie makes it look like a comedy, but the clip I saw at the press event was waaay gorier and definitely in the horror-comedy realm. Here’s my full rundown of that gnarly first footage.
• Also at /Film, I wrote a quick primer on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the classic ‘60s sitcom that is still very funny decades later. I also touched briefly upon how the series may brush up against modern viewers’ often ahistorical ideas surrounding American parenting and gender roles.
• Yesterday by total chance I found out my name is on some billboards in LA! If you stop by Amoeba Music in Hollywood, give Paul Walter Hauser, Taron Egerton, and my review for the true crime series Black Bird a wave!

I almost forgot to ask: what have y’all been watching?