Weekend Watch — 4/14/23
Trauma recovery + Buster Poindexter gets Scorsesed + screen reunion between brat packers Molly Ringwald & Ally Sheedy...
We’re cruising into the weekend with another awesome list of movie releases, series drops, and tv shows, as seen on this week’s TueDo List — LET’S GO!
Here are this week’s picks:
Single Drunk Female | Season 2 (Freeform Network; Hulu): A public flameout at a New York media company forces 20-something alcoholic Samantha Fink (Sofia Black-D'Elia) to move back home with her bossy mother (Ally Sheedy); Samantha then sets out on a path to figure out her best self while confronted with remnants of her old life. Molly Ringwald joins Breakfast Club bud for Season 2 of this Jenni Konner-produced comedy.
Personality Crisis: One Night Only (Showtime): Martin Scorsese turns his camera on another beloved New York institution: the singular David Johansen. Equally celebrated as the lead singer-songwriter of the androgynous '70s glam punk groundbreakers The New York Dolls and for his complete reinvention as hepcat lounge lizard Buster Poindexter in the '80s, the chameleonic Johansen has created an entire genre unto himself, combining swing, blues, and rock for something at once mischievous and deeply personal.
Seven Kings Must Die (Netflix): Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon) is back in this film topping off The Last Kingdom historical fiction series. Following the death of King Edward, invaders, and rival heirs do battle for the crown. Uthred and his comrades strive to form a united England.
Rare Objects (Theaters, VOD): An adaptation of Kathleen Tessaro's novel of the same name, tells the story of a young woman who seeks to rebuild her life when she takes work at an antique store. She regains her confidence from the kind souls who own the shop until those from her traumatic past begin to resurface.
Barry | Season 4 Finale (HBO): A dark comedy starring Bill Hader as a depressed, low-rent hitman from the Midwest. Lonely and dissatisfied in his life, he reluctantly travels to Los Angeles to execute a hit on an aspiring actor. Barry stumbles his way into an acting class led by the egocentric but weirdly charming Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) where he not only falls in love with the aspiring actress Sally (Sarah Goldberg) but falls in love with the art of acting.
Started “The Power” this week and should finish this weekend. It’s based on a novel by Naomi Alderman about the sudden appearance in adolescent girls of the ability to channel electricity from their bodies.
It weaves together the stories of a handful of different girls (and one young man!) from different backgrounds and areas of the world, and the different ways that they experience it as it develops and becomes more public/widespread. Like anyone given a great power of any kind, it is wielded to various degrees of care/abuse.
The literalization of the metaphor of women making change by banding together with their own powers and the suggestion that the ability emerged as a natural form of self-defense after thousands of years of patriarchal oppression can sometimes feel a bit heavy handed, but it’s hard not to feel it deeply and want to cheer them on— even when it means challenging your own reactions to why/how the power may be used in violent and/or revengeful ways.
Gonna have to watch Single Drunk Female