This Month's Best Streaming Gems
Here at Digg we try to keep you up-to-date with review roundups on the latest big-item TV and movie premieres. Of course, not everything gets the pre-launch buzz it deserves. In the age of streaming services there's more good stuff than ever, but some of it takes a little time to find an audience and champions amongst critics. Here are some recent gems you might've missed and some good takes on them — if anything here catches your eye, it's just a click away:
'Everything Sucks!' (Netflix, 10 episodes)
Move aside, "Stranger Things" kids — everyone knows the '90s is the decade we should be milking for hip, profitable nostalgia now. By all accounts the beginning of "Everything Sucks" plays like it was constructed as a cynical ploy full of needle-drops and "d'ya remember this?" moments. Once you get to know the show's group of misfit teens and working-class adults living in Boring, Oregon, you'll start to come around to feelings that are less nostalgic than they are timeless.
Everything Sucks! delivers an earnest message about learning how to be comfortable in your own skin that most people can relate to — even if they didn't go to high school in the '90s. And most important: The episodes are mercifully short. Everything Sucks! routinely clocks in at around 22 minutes; the longest episode hits 27 minutes (which is more like 25, since the end credits that Netflix pushes you to skip through are just about two minutes).
Once you get past the pilot, the show reveals something very . . . Canadian about itself, despite being set in Oregon. (Don't worry; the Ramona Quimby books remain unchallenged as the best fiction about young people in Oregon.) What I mean is there are twinges of Degrassi at work in the show's humble ramble: it's quaint and amiable, and almost everyone is regular good-looking instead of Hollywood good-looking.
When the latter half of the season eases up on the '90s nostalgia onslaught to follow a group of misfits banding together to make a sci-fi B movie, it becomes far more focused and fun almost immediately.
[Vox]
Watch it if: you need a little heart with your heavy doses of nostalgia.
'Counterpart' (Starz, 10 episodes)
What's better than one J.K. Simmons? Two, clearly. "Counterpart," a Starz drama from Justin Marks, tells the tale of two Howard Silks — one from our world, and one from a parallel dimension whose past our world shared until a Cold War-era experiment opened a passage between them. For 30 years the two worlds have coordinated, diverged and spied on one another. "Counterpart" wraps up its first season on March 25th; a second one is guaranteed. Come for the J.K. double-dose, stay for the intrigue.
There are essentially two Counterparts: the spy drama with science fiction trappings, and the character study with same. Spy Howard often has to carry bureaucrat Howard through the latest crisis, and the character version of Counterpart can more than carry the spy story when it starts to feel too pokey.
[UPROXX]
Marks' series demands your full and undivided attention, which is a major plus in the real world where viewers scan Twitter or text their friends while watching TV. That's not an option here.
Most AU is intended to illuminate the human condition, and the frailty of fate; it shows what the world could be, in order to throw into relief what is. But as Howard stares at his counterpart, everything dissolves into a fog of uncertainty. Finding a new world leaves everything less clear, not more. When you look into an alternate universe, Counterpart suggests, you find out how little you know about this one.
Watch it if: "Twin Peaks: The Return" and "Fargo" season 3 didn't sate your appetite for prestige TV with leading twin roles.
'Nailed It!' (Netflix, 6 episodes)
Fans of "The Great British Baking Show" who've grown a little tired of competence and flair should turn to Netflix's "Nailed it!," where each episode serves up some fresh hell(s) wrought by a bumbling baker or two. Nicole Byer, the host, keeps things light and humorous while the assembled amateur pasty chefs flail around in their attempts to recreate Instagrammable baked goods. The show hits all the fun parts of any cooking show — it's just the food on the table that ends up terrible.
The host [Nicole Byer] is actually funny. If you've watched Cake Wars or Cupcake Wars, hosted by Jonathan Bennett — that's right, in case you weren't aware, Aaron Samuels from Mean Girls hosts cooking shows for the Food Network — you know the "hilarious" bits that are scripted for him are cringe-y as hell. Byer, a veteran of Upright Citizens Brigade, doesn't bother with written bits because she knows how to improv.
[Vulture]
Nobody here goes on a journey and (thankfully) nobody recalls a vague childhood memory in order to add a little pathos into their bake. Recipes for each round do flash up but the speed at which the disappear suggest that Nailed It! is not for the seasoned baker. This is simply a giddy and infectious fever dream in which a lack of talent is a prerequisite for entering.
Chances are, your enjoyment is mostly going to depend on how much you like baking and/or food shows in general. The contestants are all pretty charming, the format goes down easy, and some of the dessert creations are memorable. (The last episode involves an edible bust of President Donald Trump that will haunt you.)
Watch it if: you've ever taken joy in someone else's failure… but not too much joy.
'Good Time' (Amazon Prime, feature film)
Robert Pattinson (yes, he of "Twilight" and the fourth "Potter") stars in this scrappy crime drama from the Safdie brothers ("Heaven Knows What"). The less you know about the plot and Pattinson's character Connie the better. The Safdies and Pattinson got nominated for Independent Spirit Awards for this film, so just know it's likely that whatever R-Pattz and/or the Safdie's do next, there's a good chance it'll get people talking.
I'd like to personally hold this as an object lesson. When I first became aware of Pattinson in the Twilight films (and, I guess, the Harry Potter movies) I was a pompous ass and wrote him off as a haircut. I liked his performance in David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, but everything in that is heavily mannered and stylized. I never bothered to think that he could, you know, act.
Through it all, Good Time is propelled by a pounding, synthy score from Daniel Lopatin (also known as the electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never) and the brilliant cinematography of Safdie regular Sean Price Williams, who bathes Connie in various ghastly shades of neon as he stumbles further into the bowels of Queens.
With this movie, both Pattinson and the Safdie brothers have broken new ground in their careers; if you haven't been keeping track of what either of them is up to, Good Time would be a good time to start.
[Slate]
Watch it if: you pride yourself as someone who watches the kinds of movies the Oscars pass over.