Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

with Kevin Fallon

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

with Kevin Fallon

Wishing you all could see Glass Onion.
The best part of The White Lotus (Non-Butts Category).
An ode to Christina Applegate’s cursing.
The GMA drama I can’t stop thinking about.
Harrison Ford is *certainly* back.

TheGlass OnionRelease Makes No Sense

It should be our right as Americans to watch Kate Hudson absolutely slay a comeback role on a big screen in a crowded theater.

We pay taxes. We vote. We are owed the giggle that grows into a roar every time Hudson is on screen in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. It is a shared experience that happens only in a theater, and it’s so gratifying. It’s why it’s so maddening that Netflix’s release strategy for the movie is so nonsensical, bordering on idiotic.

Netflix picked up the rights to the sequels to the surprise 2019 hit Knives Out for $450 million. While, at first glance, nothing about that sentence should be too surprising: Netflix shelling out an ungodly amount of money to lend credibility to its original film library? That happens often. But there was still something confusing, that didn’t sit right about it.

Knives Out, with Daniel Craig’s goofy Foghorn Leghorn Southern accent, original mystery, and Chris Evans’ envy-inducing sweater wardrobe, became somewhat of a phenomenon because it was a rarity: a movie that was not based on existing IP, featuring a superhero, or produced by Marvel that was a bonafide box-office smash. As critics and industry insiders fawned over it, the film was assigned somewhat of a “savior” status. It was proof that people were willing to go to the theater to see original material again, a sign that the floundering theatrical market might be resuscitated yet.

And then its future movies were snatched up by the streaming service many people blame for cinemas’ demise in the first place. That’s showbiz, baby!

It was a surprise, then, that Netflix made the historic decision to put Glass Onion in theaters across the country for a week, beginning over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. As part of the Academy’s rules, Netflix has had to put films it wants to receive Oscar consideration in theaters, but usually it’s just a single screen in New York and Los Angeles—a formality. This was a major conceit for the streamer, which has long valued new subscribers who may be interested in their films than a box-office haul.

While Netflix is notorious for its lack of transparency when it comes to viewership numbers or ticket sales—so take this with all of the salt in the Atlantic Ocean—the film reportedly made $13 million over the holiday weekend at just 700 theaters.

People were excited to see the movie. They went to see the movie. Anecdotally, they really liked the movie, based on my friends and social-media circle, and have been saying as much. I’m saying as much now: This movie is really fun! When I described it to a friend recently, I said the word “fun” so many times we joked that we should have turned it into a drinking game: a shot each time I said “fun” again. Presumably, reading this will make you want to see the movie. But you can’t! Sorry! By the time you’ve read this, the film won’t be in theaters anymore. It makes no sense.

Granted, this is the first time Netflix has attempted a strategy like this, but the messaging has still been confusing.

At Thanksgiving, for example, my brother suggested that the family watch Glass Onion on Netflix, because he knew that Netflix was behind the sequel and had heard that the film was “out” over the weekend. It’s actually only in theaters right now, I told him. He said then maybe he’d go see it the next weekend after family obligations for the holiday were over. Well, it wouldn’t be in theaters anymore, I said. He assumed that meant it was going to be on Netflix, and got excited. That’s a fair assumption! But, no. It wouldn’t be on the streamer until Christmas. It just was, for no reason, just no longer going to be in theaters. How would any normal, rational-thinking person who just wants to see a fun movie (take a shot!) be able to keep track of any of that?

People want to see a movie, but now, in spite of weeks of marketing alerting them to the film’s release, they can’t, because they only had a seven-day timeframe to do so. Theater owners desperately want to keep movie playing, especially since, between Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s release several weeks ago and Avatar: The Way of the Water’s opening in the middle of December, there are weeks without a major release with hit potential. Glass Onion would be the perfect movie to keep the box office booming during that doldrum.

The future we all feel is inevitable seems to be arriving quicker than expected, when there’s going to be just two kinds of movies: movies released on streamers like Netflix, and Marvel films in theaters. That’s a major bummer. It shouldn’t be only superhero movies that are keeping cinemas’ lights on and doors open. But when even something like a Knives Out sequel is saving itself for streaming, then that’s the situation we’ll soon be in.

And we lose something when that happens. Adult dramas that used to be major box-office players—movies like Terms of Endearment or Erin Brockovich—will stop being made. Inclusive, diverse stories will stop being made. (Look at the Bros discourse for more on that.) That’s not just a blight on the film industry, but on our culture, which looks to the screen and the stories on it to guide us and change us.

As for the films on the streamers themselves, even the good ones will suffer. I’m so glad I saw Glass Onion in a theater because, if I had waited for it to be on streaming, I probably wouldn’t have thought it was good. I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much.

I would have been folding laundry or scrolling through Instagram. When a major twist is revealed involving Janelle Monáe’s character, I would have missed out on the chorus of gasps from fellow moviegoers. I would have missed several of the hidden-in-plain-sight clues that all payoff as the mystery is solved at the end. I would not have experienced the spiritual joining of arms that was a crowd of people delighting together in Kate Hudson being so damn good in this movie.

The fun of Glass Onion is the theatrical experience. We should all be watching it together, then coming home and pulling up videos of Kate Hudson singing “Cinema Italiano” in Nine on YouTube and agreeing that we didn’t give her enough credit then. Instead we’ll be sitting in a cloud of our own farts playing Candy Crush while the movie streams in the background, completely missing out on the Hudsonaissance. Kate deserves better. We all deserve better.

The Best Part of The White Lotus

When I planned to write a little something about how The White Lotus has gotten really good this season, I didn’t mean to time it to the episode with all the butts, incest, and gay sex, I swear.

That said, those certainly were major elements of “That’s Amore,” my favorite episode of the season thus far, and they’ve certainly gotten a lot of attention. A screenshot of the closed captioning when Jennifer Coolidge’s character walks in on an illicit tryst—“MEN PANTING”—became an instant meme, while Buzzfeed is making an early play for the Pulitzer with its piece, “The Men—And Butts—of The White Lotus.”

Sexual politics and power dynamics are the preoccupation of this season of the HBO series, which is becoming clearer each week. Sunday’s episode certainly proved that, but it wasn’t one of the more graphic sex scenes that was the highlight for me. It was a conversation between the season’s two standout performers, Aubrey Plaza and Meghann Fahy.

Plaza has been a transfixing presence this season, playing a tightly wound woman who was confident that she knew who she was, who her husband was, and how—and why—their marriage worked, to the point that she was comfortable judging everyone else. But their trip to The White Lotus with business friends has slowly unraveled all of that, as she alternately tries to conceal that she is feeling unmoored by it and leaning into the fact that she is reeling altogether.

The more she dwells on the reality that her husband allowed his friend to hire hookers and then partied with them, the further her sense of control slips away. She embraces a bit of a reckless abandon, getting sloshed at a winery and antagonizing her husband and their friends. But it culminates in a private sitdown with Fahy’s character, in which Plaza urges her to acknowledge that an affair happened.

Fahy has been a revelation this season, especially in this scene. There’s a look on her face as Plaza says this: one of defiance, offense, stoicism, heartbreak, and certitude all at once. That, too, was instantly turned into a meme—though, in this case, not one giggling about men having sex, but one in awe of Fahy’s performance.

The dynamic between these two women is what’s holding this season of The White Lotus together. It’s so good that, inexplicably, I rank it as more important than the butts. Who am I?

Christina Applegate IsF***ing Amazing

I spent the Thanksgiving weekend crying. Well, maybe we all did. I don’t know your family.

My crying was somewhat purposeful, though, as I spent each night before bed catching up on the new (and final) season of Dead to Me on Netflix. The series, which stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, toed the perfect line between uproarious snark and extreme emotion. It was a show about grief and anger, the ways those things take over our lives, and why we should allow ourselves to feel and express them.

Which brings me to the thing I want to highlight: Applegate is phenomenal in this. Like, astonishing. She’s magnificent throughout the whole series, but I would like to single out the way that she curses. Christina Applegate is just so good at saying the word “fuck.”

In the eighth episode of the season, her character gets bad news and, almost like a biological impulse that she can’t stop, she just starts saying “fuck,” over and over again, a different way each time. It’s what I’d imagine hearing a virtuoso musician improvise on their instrument would be like, or watching a prima ballerina dance to a piece of music they feel moved by. That is how good Christina Applegate is at cursing. By the time, near the end of the season, she calls a doctor a “fucking dick fuck” on the phone, I knew I was watching a master at work.

I Can’t Get Enough GMA Gossip

Until three days ago, I had no idea who Amy Robach or TJ Holmes, the Good Morning America anchors caught having an affair, were. Now, I know more about them than I do my own family. This is a tabloid celebrity scandal the likes of which we haven’t had in a long time: utterly meaningless, but irresistible. (That they apparently fell in love while training for a half marathon, whereas I would be fantasizing about murdering the person forcing me to exercise, just adds another layer to the fascination.)

The way that it was all happening in plain sight, and that they just hosted GMA the rest of the week like the whole world wasn’t gossiping about them—it’s so perfect. Every once in a while, we need to grant ourselves permission to embrace our trashy impulses to consume salacious news without feeling gross about it. Now is that time.

How You Doin’, Indy?

They de-aged Harrison Ford for flashback scenes in the new Indiana Jones sequel, and I’m not mad about it…

Spoiler Alert: Bring all the tissues you have to this gorgeous movie. (Now in theaters)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover: The sex scenes are so steamy and hot, but it’s also surprisingly moving. (Now on Netflix)
Slow Horses: I’ve always been confused by this aggressively boring name for a great British spy drama, but it’s still worth watching. (Now on Apple TV+)

Gossip Girl: Serena and Blair would be appalled at what’s happened to this series. (Now on HBO Max)
Emancipation: The conversation about whether or not this Will Smith movie should have been released would be more interesting if it was good. (Now in theaters)

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