What I'm Watching: Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, The Crowded Room, iCarly, and More
On four movies, three shows, three books, a cast commentary, and the AI takeover.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Sony
Here’s the rundown on everything I watched, read, and wrote about this week.
The shows:
As if Jury Duty wasn’t delightful enough already, there’s now a cast commentary version of the season available featuring phenomenal insights from the cast and crew – including Truman Show-ed subject Ron Gladden and real-life non-egomaniac James Marsden. It’s been years since I sat through an entire TV show cast commentary for fun, but this is exactly the kind of show that leaves viewers hungry for more jokes, more details, and more time spent with everyone involved. The commentary offers all of that and more, and like the show, it’s easy to marathon.
The new, grown-up version of iCarly is back for its third season on Paramount+, and I’m part of a seemingly small but fervent group of people who are hyped as hell about it. The first couple episodes of season 3 are pretty good, continuing the show’s surprisingly smooth transition from kids’ comedy to adult sitcom. If this show seems somewhat outside the wheelhouse of my usual coverage, I can explain: here’s a piece I wrote last year about why I find the new series (which, it should be said, has nothing to do with Dan Schnieder) so entertaining.
The new Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room, headlined by Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried, unfortunately can’t be saved by either actor’s obvious talent. Good acting is pretty much the only thing this show has going for it, as its plot is muddled, obvious, and taxing – on both viewers’ emotions and our attention. Full review to come!
The movies:
I went into Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse without many expectations, and came out of it absolutely stunned. The first film in Lord and Miller’s franchise was a masterpiece, but watching this one felt like the closest I’ll ever get to understanding how people must have felt watching The Arrival of a Train in 1896, feeling like a speeding train had come to life right in front of them. The writing is a little slacker than the first installment and the sound mix in my theater wasn’t quite right, but the visuals were awe-inspiring to an almost scary degree. Seriously, I went home and cried just thinking about how overwhelmingly gorgeous and dynamic this movie’s animation looks.
Awkwardly contrasting second bullet point time: the only other movie I watched this week was Cruising, William Friedkin’s 1980 film about a cop (Al Pacino) undercover on the gay scene in New York. There are some good parts to this film, but it’s mostly a not-so-hot (seriously, it makes so many things that should be sexy look unsexy) mess with a severely underwritten ending.
The reads:
I filled in what might have been my biggest literary blind spot this week by reading Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. By this point, no one should need me to tell them that this classic novel about resilience, change, and profound pain is an absolute master work, but I’m happy to say it anyway. I’m forever grateful that I somehow made it this far in life without having the story spoiled, which meant I got to sob my way through the final pages. Read this!
I also read another classic I’m arriving late to, which, coincidentally, is also another book that always turns up on banned books lists: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. It’s a seminal young adult novel and a great read at any age, but I can also officially say that I love the movie – which might be my favorite new release of this year so far? – even more.
I have Mo Ryan’s book Burn It Down on pre-order (it’s out Tuesday!), but in the meantime, I couldn’t stop myself from reading the excerpted piece everyone’s talking about, from Vanity Fair. In it, she digs into the toxic workplace behind the scenes of Lost, a show that’s near and dear to my heart from a writer (Damon Lindelof) whose seemingly perfect genius I bought into wholeheartedly before this eye-opener of an investigation. The last few paragraphs in particular here are heartbreaking, galvanizing journalism.
Maggie Milner’s romance in poem form, Couplets: A Love Story, is at once brainy and sensual. While its more highfalutin elements sometimes took me out of the flow of the story’s emotion, it’s certainly a book I haven’t stopped thinking about since I finished it.
Odds and ends:
I’m extremely excited about Slashfilm’s new Pride Month series, “Movies Are Gay.” Every day in June, a group of us writers be sharing a short essay on a different film, from LGBTQ+ favorites like Portrait of a Lady On Fire to hidden gems like Young Soul Rebels to – my personal favorite subgenre as a queer theory lover – movies that aren’t actually canonically queer but definitely still feel hella gay. I kicked off the series on June 1st with the quintessential example of that latter type of film: Point Break.
It should not come as a surprise at this point that I did not like the Ted Lasso series(?) finale.
If you want to read an interview where I accidentally rambled some nonsense about camera angles instead of asking the question I meant to ask (it was going to be a good one, I swear), here’s me chatting with Reality filmmaker Tina Satter and star Sydney Sweeney.
Finally, I thought this conversation (which I wrote based on Ryan Scott’s reporting from ATX) from WGA leaders about how AI is a threat to the entertainment industry was really interesting. It’s a bummer that the directors’ guild reached a deal today when their participation in the strike could’ve helped bring it to a swift end, but them’s the breaks. All eyes are on SAG now to see what they do!
It’s been a while since y’all chimed in to let me know what you’re watching (or reading, or listening to) recently. I hope this means you’re so engrossed in whatever it is that you just can’t tear yourself away! As always, feel free to comment with recommendations — or even anti-recommendations, because it’s just as good to know what not to waste our time on, right? Cheers!
Finished What Moves the Dead last week and loved it. This weekend Jan and I watched Ratatouille (which continues to be fun and sweet) and fell asleep to Sister Act.