Staircase Wit

Imagine being in a relationship for almost two decades with the love of your life, and one day, the relationship just abruptly ends. You're back to the drawing board, but how do you start dating again in the 2020s when you have never seen a dating app in your life? Imagine being gay and middle-aged, on top of all these. How do you uncouple from a pseudo-marriage you have gotten so used to, when your entire lives have been so closely entangled for what feels like forever, when all your friends are common friends, when you share a mailbox, a Netflix account, and an expensive New York apartment? Netflix's Uncoupled's main character, Michael (played by the charming and talented Neil Patrick Harris) is a male and middle-aged Carrie Bradshaw: romantic, dislikes being single, dynamic but can sometimes get old-fashioned, and can get whiny and needy. Unsurprisingly, it feels very similar to Sex and the City, an ode to New York (its culture, art scene, and hip bars and restaurants) a...

I am terribly embarrassed by the fact that not only did I finish watching He's All That, kinilig pa ako. Don't get me wrong: there are so many scenes in this movie that will make you cringe. It's a waste of time. Yadda yadda yadda. (I saw it twice.) Notes on the Netflix movie: 1. Best thing about the movie: the two characters who also starred in the OG movie She's All That, Rachael Leigh Cook and Matthew Lillard. 2. Tanner Buchanan's character acts all sulky, gloomy, and unimpressive, but the moment Addison Rae's character shares a scene with him, he actually glows and becomes charming. 3. I love the cover of "Kiss Me", and how they used the song in the movie. So cute and adorable. 4. Jordan Van Draanen's song is downright horrible but it keeps on playing in my head.

  With sex, politics, and royal intrigue a-plenty, The Cook of Castamar is like Bridgerton on steroids, minus the young hottt Duke (and replaced by a much older and distinguished-looking Duke). This provocatively entertaining period series can be streamed on Netflix.

1. "If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product." 2. Tech giants forbid their own kids from using social media. 3. "Social media isn't a tool that's just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them." 4. The guy who invented Youtube's algorithm is now telling us to avoid watching the next video Youtube is urging you to watch. 5. Social media platforms are built to manipulate us into spending as much time in front of the screen as possible. 6. We are indeed living in a Black Mirror episode, and it's a lot scarier than most people think.

In Netflix's Hollywood, everyone is sexy, glamorous, and gorgeous. Everyone is miraculously talented. Everyone is in love. There are no real bad guys (except lawyers). Everyone wants to protect the civil rights of the minorities. Everyone does the right thing. The series starts out great--savvy and interesting. But then it slowly becomes cheesy, and ends in a cute Oscar awards show where everyone gets their happy ending. It's like the ending of the film/novel Atonement, where the writer fantasizes about an alternate reality in which everything turns out perfectly in the end, just because she felt bad about the actual events in real life.

Notes on Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (now on Netflix): 1. This is a fun, fun, fun movie to watch. This is Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in their element, and this is their kind of movie. 2. Leo and Brad have awesome chemistry together. Rick (played by Leo), a narcissistic almost has-been movie star, and Cliff (played by Brad), his "more than a brother, but less than a wife" sidekick and stuntman. 3. This film features real celebrities--Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, et al. In real life, Tate, Sebring, Folger, and Voytek Frykowski were killed by the Manson family (the hippies who tried to kill Cliff, Rick, and his wife, Francesca). In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the hippies break into Rick's house instead. This movie gives us a fantasy "what-if". 4. Awesome soundtrack. 5. So Brad Pitt's character just easily beats Bruce Lee Bruce Lee, who can go against the Chuck Norrises of this world. Yes, this mo...

Black Earth Rising is a political and legal thriller/drama about the prosecution of international war criminals linked to the Rwandan genocide. Stellar cast, and gives a thought-provoking lesson on history and international law. Rating: 4/5

Two thoughts on FYRE: The Greatest Party that Never Happened 1. We all have a friend like Billy McFarland: charming, ambitious, and always cooking up some grand get-rich-quick scheme, but once you see through them, you will realize that they are actually just lazy and incompetent. Let this Netflix documentary remind us that wild, revolutionary, epic, and obscure ideas will not make you a success. Discipline, conscientiousness, attention to detail, hard work, integrity, and pa tience will. 2. FYRE: The Greatest Party that Never Happened also shows us how vain and shallow society has become. The organizers of Fyre Festival made people believe that they can party with the cool kids, the influencers, and beautiful models like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, thanks to an unrealistically gorgeous video of a beach party and a few vague social media posts. The attendees relied on the endorsement of a few models, thinking about how attending Fyre Festival would make their Ins...

BOTH How I Met Your Mother and Friends are on Netflix! What a time to be alive.