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There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.
We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.
See: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a proper sendoff for director James Gunn, returning to the franchise up for one last wild ride through space, superhero stardom, and a soundtrack of Top 10 hits, making for the best and most watchable Marvel outing in years.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“After a 10-year partnership with the studio, James Gunn has left Marvel for its rival DC Studios, where Warner Bros has placed him in charge alongside co-chairman and co-CEO Peter Safran. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (in theaters May 5) is thus a swan song of sorts, marking the writer/director’s third and final MCU feature about the eccentric team of intergalactic do-gooders.
It comes at a perilous moment for the entertainment behemoth, courtesy of a string of creative and box-office letdowns (most recently, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) that have suggested that its cultural pull is waning. A summer-season kick-off that’s also being counted on to continue its predecessors’ success and, in the process, correct its company’s wayward course, Gunn’s latest is a last hurrah with a lot riding on it. The result, thankfully, is an amusing, exciting and surprisingly moving farewell.”
Skip: Fatal Attraction
Fatal Attraction is a bungled limited series remake, taking a thrilling, erotic classic and lending it bizarrely little stimulation—sexual or otherwise. Worse, it does nothing to undo the original film’s terrible treatment of mental health. You’ll be fine to ignore this one, Dan!
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“Despite all of its undeniable greatness, Fatal Attraction’s depiction of a woman struggling with mental illness was exploitative, and practically cruel. After publishing exec Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) spends a starry-eyed weekend with married lawyer Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), she becomes attached to the point of obsession when Dan won’t leave his wife for her.
The film relegates Alex to stigma personified; all of her increasingly terroristic actions toward Dan and his family reduce her to the ‘unhinged woman’ trope, albeit a damn fascinating one, thanks to Close’s marvelous performance. It skirts an explanation for Alex’s behavior, and it certainly doesn’t touch on any professional diagnosis, suggesting that all of Dan’s retaliatory moves against her are completely justified.
These issues have only become more troubling in hindsight, as movies have tried to distance themselves from these thorny illustrations seen in psychological thrillers of the past. But look around you: We’re drowning in a sea of remakes. (Another wave crested just last week.) It was only a matter of time before the door left ajar by Fatal Attraction’s unscrupulous treatment of mental illness was kicked open by someone brave—or overzealous—enough to think they can correct all of its mistakes at once.”
See: Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is a sexed-up spinoff of the Shonda Rhimes royal universe, but favors monarchy politics over steamy romance, to its detriment. Still, it gives one of the show’s most captivating characters a delightful, new depth.
Here’s Fletcher Peters’ take:
“Bridgerton drafted its massive army of passionate, slightly horny fans because of its deftness in balancing a lovely story with hearty amounts of steamy intercourse. The Netflix series’ abundance of illustrious sex scenes has always been bolstered by a rich plot with lovable side characters, justifying the titillating appeal. Still, the balance has shifted in the span of Bridgerton’s two seasons. If last season felt like it was less about the sex and more about the romance, this new spinoff swings the pendulum in the complete opposite direction—the bedroom romps are prioritized far more than the actual story at hand.
You might not expect Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel), the uppity leader of England shown sporadically on Shonda Rhimes’ main series, to be engaging in oodles of sexcapades. (Or maybe you do—she is a wild one, after all.) But Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story takes us back to her younger years, where the monarch is played by India Amarteifio. Unlike the other two Bridgerton tales, this spinoff reverses the narrative: When we first meet her, Charlotte is already on her way to wed King George (James Fleet, played by Corey Mylchreest in his younger years) of the Ton. She just hasn’t met him yet. Nor does she want to.”
Skip: Obsession
Obsession continues Netflix’s fixation on finding new ways to make sex…well, sexy, but comes off as a stilted first draft of a series that recycles old ideas from better franchises, giving its audience a front-row seat to watch the gears turn.
Here’s Barry Levitt’s take:
“With the Motion Picture Association making it harder to see sex on the big screen over the years, TV has had to pick up film’s mantle. In the 1990s, HBO led the way with sex scenes that would blow the minds of viewers who stuck to normal cable. With the advent of unregulated, uncensored streaming platforms, now we can binge-watch sexy shows on the regular.
Netflix’s Obsession is the latest series to bring sex to the forefront, and naturally, audiences have been going wild for it. It’s a show where the characters have sex, and a lot of it. That’s great! But there’s a major problem: Obsession is also a show that fundamentally misunderstands its own main attraction—hot, steamy sex!—by instead delivering some of the most tepid, lifeless sex scenes in recent memory. Obsession practically offers a blueprint for how not to showcase sex, undermining the reason the show exists in the first place.”
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