The Week That Was - June 17, 2025

This week ran the gamut from all-time greats to massive blunders

Watched some big things this week, including a couple of bangers in the theater, an all-time favorite for an appearance I’ll be making on another podcast this week (read on), and an Oscar nominee from this past year that I DID. NOT. LIKE. (And its name was not Emilia Pérez)

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TV

Dept. Q (Season 1) - Coming off of watching Maths Boi, this was a breath of fresh air in terms of quality. Scott Frank (the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Out of Sight and Logan who also ran Godless and The Queen’s Gambit) developed this adaptation of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Danish book series with Chandni Lahkani, which had already been successfully adapted as a film series in Denmark, but why worry about something already existing in a non-English language?! Having no relationship to the Danish Nord Noir book or film series, this works, with Matthew Goode doing the best work I’ve seen him do in possibly anything, and Alexej Manvelov (a Russo-Kurdish actor by way of Sweden) getting to steal the show in his supporting turn as the incarnation of Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘speak softly but carry a big stick’ adage Akram. The show is a taut ride, ably balancing two mysteries with a unit coming together, bonded by their individual traumas. Strong rec. Can’t wait for more. Netflix

Hacks (Season 3) - We’ve finally come to the point where we’re close to current on this one. I liked Season 3 well enough, with everyone reaching the points where they’re growing in interesting ways that might just mean they’re incongruous with the direction in which Deborah Vance’s star is heading. The thing that works the best (Ava and Deborah’s relationship) still works, and they’ve done a solid job of continuing to come up with ways for the pair to clash, with the end of this season being no exception. This continues to be a very solid watch. HBO Max

Film

Friendship (2025) - I finally made it out to the theater to see this film, and I did so alone, in the middle of a weekday, like it was intended to be seen. Tim Robinson does the thing you want him to do, and Paul Rudd is great as the cool weatherman who has a local rock band. This is for a select group of people for whom I Think You Should Leave is one of the funniest things out there, and those people should absolutely be going to this. In Theaters

Mountainhead (2025) - If we weren’t watching tech bros who thought mankind was their plaything in real time, this might have been a little more fun. Instead, Jesse Armstrong’s (creator of Peep Show and Succession) latest just felt like a fly-on-the-wall for the end of civilization while the real thing is playing out in private group chats on Signal. That the real thing is just as dumb as what’s playing out on screen here is no coincidence, but that doesn’t make watching it happen here—with Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith, and Jason Schwartzman playing self-aggrandizing analogs to profoundly unimpressive but somehow rich dinks whose wealth has made them believe they could run the world like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, and their ilk—any easier or enjoyable. It mostly does the thing it’s supposed to—making these Peter principle exemplars look like the morons they are—so if that’s what you want, watch it. HBO Max

Parthenope (2024) - From Paolo Sorrentino (the auteur behind 2013’s Oscar-winner The Great Beauty), this newest entry into his oeuvre is so tedious as to have made me wonder if I’d still like The Great Beauty if I saw it today. This was so bad, I had to watch it in three sittings just to make it through its interminable 137 minutes. Celeste Dalla Porta is clearly very attractive, but that the whole film serves to just show her wander through beautifully framed shots of Neapolitan villas and Capresi beaches with thin curtains billowing in the wind while saying absolutely nothing of substance. This is the most aimless, vacuous, and self-indulgent “exploration of beauty and its burdens” I can remember seeing in a long time, with its cinematography meant to paper over its inadequacies. HBO Max, Plex

Sinners (2025) - Ryan Coogler’s Mississippi Delta vampire blues epic is definitely very ambitious. This might mean for some that it’s trying to be too many things at once, but I’m not amongst those levying such a complaint. I loved every second of this. Every movie should have multiple Michael B. Jordans. I was frequently moved to the point of feeling overwhelmed by my reaction to what I was seeing in the best possible way. If art should elicit strong feelings, this did so in a way that really worked for me. I hope this opens up studios’ check books for Ryan Coogler’s next half-dozen projects. Fantastic stuff. In theaters and now available on VOD platforms

Jackie Brown (2025) - This is my favorite Quentin Tarantino movie, and I got to rewatch it in advance of my appearance tonight on Movie Night Extravaganza, which I’m super jazzed to be on. You can watch live at 8 PM ET/7 PM CT/etc, or anytime after. It’ll also make its way to audio platforms later in the week. Tubi

The Brutalist (2024) - I’m hard-pressed to think of a movie that I had a more visceral and disdainful reaction to than this film. I can’t get how much I hated it out of my head, so much so that I’m pretty sure I’m writing a full diatribe about it later this week. Hated it on so many levels (here’s a brief primer). HBO Max