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.
Skip: Spaceman
Spaceman is a new but not-so-fresh take on the sad guy sci-fi drama led by Adam Sandler as a weepy astronaut who’s trying to save the universe. It’s also about daddy issues, alien spiders, and communism. Put simply: The film is about as miserable as its titular cosmonaut.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“From Gravity and Interstellar to The Martian, Ad Astra, and High Life, the sad-astronaut sci-fi movie has lately become a subgenre unto itself, and Johan Renck’s Spaceman now joins its weepy ranks. A tediously maudlin saga about a Czech cosmonaut on a mission to the far reaches of the galaxy who really misses his wife and can’t get over his dad’s mistakes—and finds a way to cope with both courtesy of an unexpected new alien pal—it’s a star vehicle for Adam Sandler that strives for stratospheric emotional heights and yet proves so self-seriously somber and saccharine that it plays like a leaden parody.
Adam Sandler’s ‘Spaceman’ Is Shockingly, Confusingly Sad
Jakub (Sandler) moves about his spaceship with sunken cheeks, exhausted body language and a haggard look in his eyes. This is nominally due to the fact that his toilet won’t stop making horrible noises that are keeping him up at night and slowly driving him insane. Mostly, though, it’s because he’s sad. In case this wasn’t immediately obvious, Chernobyl director Renck’s film (on Netflix March 1), adapted from Jaroslav Kalfař’s book, has Jakub make a PR phone call down to Earth, during which a young sixth-grader tells him that she read that he’s ‘the loneliest man in the world.’ Jakub denies this but he’s unconvincing, and his spirits aren’t lifted by the notion that he’s on the cusp of saving the universe from a big purple mass of particles on the outskirts of Jupiter dubbed the Chopra Cloud that he’s been sent to investigate, all by himself, on a year-long solo mission.”
See: Problemista
Problemista is Julio Torres’ glorious technicolor ode to the outrageous details that make up our seemingly mundane world. Paired with a pitch-perfect (and totally manic) Tilda Swinton, Torres’ spectacular film is one you’ll want to see over and over again—either now, or when it releases wide March 21.
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“At a Q&A following the world premiere of Julio Torres’ debut feature Problemista at the SXSW festival last year, star Tilda Swinton told the audience that she felt like ‘all color, no shape.’ That might also be the best way to describe Problemista. From the first 10 minutes, it’s gleefully apparent that the film will not fit into any box, no matter how twisted or mangled its frame might become as viewers try to compress its multitude of oddities into a tidy package.
‘Problemista’: Julio Torres and Tilda Swinton Spin Wackiness Into Hilarious Beauty
Problemista takes pride in those small, but countless peculiarities. But it’s not with a sneer of arrogance. Rather, Torres and Problemista function as extensions of one another, elevating Torres’ singular eye for the details of life’s microscopic dramas, blowing them up onto the silver screen. In Problemista, Torres and Swinton excavate the forgotten, terribly funny beauty of transience, finding the joy and fantasy in the strangest gift of all: being alive.’”
See: The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin isn’t just a mouthful of a title, it’s also a mountain of fun, especially when star Noel Fielding turns the legendary British robber into a comedic parody of himself, reimagining his crimes as hysterical follies.
Here’s Fletcher Peters’ take:
“Have you ever heard of Dick Turpin? If you live anywhere but England, the name may sound a little unfamiliar. Thanks to a new Apple TV+ series about the infamous character, though, you’re about to become acquainted with one of the greatest (and, now, goofiest) British robbers.
‘Dick Turpin’ Fills the ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Hole in Your Heart
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, premiering Friday and releasing new episodes weekly on Apple TV+, isn’t entirely made up, as the title may suggest. Dick, played by The Mighty Boosh star and Great British Baking Show host Noel Fielding, was a real highwayman in the early 1700s, although his storylines in this new series—like fighting an evil witch, for example—are fictionalized. So instead of following a cut-and-dry biopic formula to retell Dick’s story, Allen and Fielding set forth to turn the burglar into a real jokester. The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin begins at Dick’s end: He’s about to be hanged for his plethora of crimes. But before he’s finally taken out, Dick has one final mission—he’s going to tell his life story from start to finish, detailing his many robberies and his colorful gang. Dick’s stories are too hilarious to be forgotten.”
See: Elsbeth
Elsbeth brings Carrie Preston’s character in The Good Wife and The Good Fight to the forefront for her own series, a delightful, harebrained spin on the procedural that finds Elsbeth Tascioni’s happy-go-lucky former attorney cleaning up crime from New York’s mean streets
Here’s Kevin Fallon’s take:
“Elsbeth, the new procedural premiering Thursday night on CBS, is the second official spinoff of the Emmy-winning legal drama The Good Wife. It follows The Good Fight, the sequel series of sorts that ended in 2022 after six seasons of ripped-from-headlines cases and Christine Baranski looking glorious in designer power blazers. Like The Good Fight, Elsbeth stars a fan-favorite character originally introduced 14 years ago in the first season of The Good Wife: Elsbeth Tascioni, an unconventional and often underestimated attorney played by Carrie Preston, who won an Emmy for the role in 2013.
‘Elsbeth’ Is the Quirky New ‘Columbo’ We Didn’t Know We Needed
‘The difference between this and The Good Fight and Good Wife is the world,’ co-creator Robert King says. ‘The Good Fight was a takedown at this time of craziness with Trump. The Good Wife was really about the law and how the law can corrupt. This is not that. This is about seeing the elites taken down a bit through Elsbeth, who seems every bit the non-elite. She loves Cats. She loves The Lion King. She probably would read Glamour magazine from cover to cover, just to see the pictures. She’s that kind of person.’ In other words, if you understand who the character Elsbeth is, you understand the distinctly unique vibe of her show, which is a quirky take on a Columbo-style police procedural more than it is a descendant of The Good Wife’s politics-heavy, legal-thriller universe.
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