Elon Musk, The Dalai Lama, and a junkie are traveling in a small plane. Suddenly, the plane shudders and shakes, and all goes quiet. The pilot comes into the cabin and announces “We have an engine failure and are about to crash. We have only three parachutes and I’m taking one. You three sort out…
Category: Mindless Mondays
Ranking and Grading the Seasons of “Ozark”
If “Ozark” was ever a contender for the title of “Best Crime Drama on Television” then it long ago seceded that mantle to “Better Call Saul” (another crime drama finishing its run this year, albeit in a much higher quality). “Ozark” was as frustrating as it was excellent, often alternating between choice bits of drama…
Forget “Fantastic Beasts,” the Founding of Hogwarts is the Prequel We Really Want
TV Reviews: “Vikings: Valhalla” and “The Girl Before”
“Vikings: Valhalla”…As a long-suffering “fan” of the original “Vikings,” I kept watching all six seasons years after most people had given up. So I wasn’t totally thrilled to see Netflix revive the “Vikings” brand, and in a way where changes are so minimal, they’re practically non-existent. Fans of the original will recognize some very familiar…
Oscar Nominations: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Per usual, there were some notable snubs and some long-shot heartbreaker snubs that Alabama Liberal was holding out hope for. However, an unusually strong Best Picture category almost makes up for it… The Good When was the last time that the two best films of the year were actually nominated for Best Picture? Well, that’s…
ALL 2021 Movies Ranked and Graded
Quick Note: Better late than never, Alabama Liberal was so far behind on his annual movies countdown that I wasn’t able to post it on New Year’s Day (a tradition) but nearly a month later. My apologies, but I think you’ll agree that 2021 was a pretty good year for movies, and hopefully find several…
TV Reviews: “Ozark” Season 4 (Part 1) and “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”
I’ve made a New Year’s resolution to include more TV and Film reviews this year (they were almost completely absent from this site in 2021). Luckily, Netflix had a pair of buzz-worthy shows in January that almost everyone on Earth has already seen and weighed in on. However, they were both improperly reviewed on Rotten…
Best TV Shows of 2021
Note: One thing I noticed about the TV shows I selected as the “Best of the Year” are that setting plays a huge role in almost all of them. I can’t remember a time I’ve done this annual list, and the distinctive locations of each series were so central to them; that’s even true of…
Best TV Moments (or Episodes) of 2021
A few honorable mentions: I almost included Evan Peters’s shocking death in “Mare of Easttown,” but felt conflicted; while that was certainly the most shocking murder of 2021 TV, I just felt too bad for his character (one of my favorites) to really include it as a “Best” moment. Likewise, I enjoyed “Yellowstone”‘s no-fuss, no-muss…
The BEST TV Characters of 2021
I had a hard time narrowing the list down this year, and I rewrote it a few times before finally deciding to exclude a handful of favorites. The toughest cuts included: Mandy Patinkin’s wacky-yet-earnest judge in the fourth season of “The Good Fight,” Kate Winslet’s dogged detective in “Mare of Easttown,” Anthony Mackie’s soaring arc…
Ranking and Grading ALL Seasons of “Dexter”
Here’s hoping against hope Showtime won’t greenlight some God-awful Harrison spinoff, and this actually will be all the seasons of Dexter there are. The seasons of Dexter are a little hard to properly rank since the series has two bad seasons, two terrific seasons, and five that are different variations of “pretty good.” It’s those…
“Dexter” Series Finale…Again…
Now that we know how it ends, the question on every “Dexter: New Blood” viewer’s mind is: “Will this be the real series finale of “Dexter?” [Spoilers ahead] Surely to God it will be since the idea of doing this a third time may be too much even for the hardest core “Dexter” fan…of which…
The Worst TV Characters of the Year
As always with this annual list of the year’s worst TV characters, I focused on TV shows that were of a reasonable quality, and it’s only a character or two (or 10) that wasn’t working. Worst Ending for a Beloved Character: Bosch (Titus Welliver) from “Bosch”…I love this series and am already planning to watch…