Time Pass: Enjoyable but Forgettable and Meh

Time Pass Enjoyable but Forgettable:

I shared the good time pass I enjoyed in May last week, but honestly I did lose a lot of hours to things that were enjoyable while watching, and then disappeared from my mind soon after! The perfect Time Pass.

Movie: Fountain of Youth (Apple TV): This movie is National Treasure meets Indiana Jones meets heist movies with a good cast, and a funny Natalie Portman and John Krasinski playing brother and sister. This is an action movie with some laughs, no romance really at all and some questionable historical connections!

TV Series: Dept Q (Netflix): My continued love of UK crime dramas brought me to this mostly because it stars some favorites, Matthew Goode and Kelly MacDonald. It’s based on a Nordic crime novel series that I haven’t read (The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen), and I liked it despite the violence because Matthew Goode played a different character than he usually does. Kelly MacDonald plays his police therapist and is rarely in it but every scene with her is wonderful. I hope and expect it will get a second season.

TV Series: Mobland (Paramount +): This is #NotMyGenre - very violent mob family show, but Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan playing the Irish couple leading the family, are absolutely my genre, and that made watching this enjoyable while it lasted but it truly does not need to be renewed. The two of them cracked me up the entire time I watched it, and I expect had a great time playing these roles.

TV Series: Sirens (Netflix): I went into this because I like Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon; I am definitely over all the rich white people behaving badly and/or maybe cult leader shows, so I had low expectations. But honestly, I watched it in one weekend, it made me laugh, captured the above and below stairs relationships very well, and I loved the cast of characters. It’s not that deep but did reverse the mythology of the sirens in an interesting way. And I finally liked Meghann Fahy in something.

Time Pass Meh:

TV Series: The Studio (Apple TV): This was getting rave reviews and I love an industry take-down, but I just didn’t like this at all, the same thing happened every episode, and the characters never learned anything. Despite a good cast and good performances, it was meh for me.

TV Series: Anthracite (Netflix): I have no idea what this French drama was about in the end but my complete-ist nature “forced” me to finish it anyway. There’s a cult, there’s also a recent crime, there’s a horrible mining company and a beautiful french town in the snowy mountains. It was meh for me, and also one of those too visually dark to watch shows that is overtaking the streaming services these days.

TV Series: Overcompensating (Prime): This wasn’t for me. I mean that literally. I don’t believe it was made for me but I’ve loved coming of age college comedies in the past, so I watched it the weekend it came out. I think young men, the young women who chase them and/or are chased by them, and the adults and society who shape what young men think they should be, were the audience. I hope that it does what it intends to do with those audiences. For me, the characters were frustrating and their growth over the show was minimal. The lead, Benito Skinner, who rose to online fame online during Pandemic, created this show loosely based on his own college experience and was a better performer than I expected. Also Connie Britton is in it and has one major episode in which she is glorious as usual. Still a meh for me.