There was a time when tales of aliens, space travel, and robots were believed to be the strict province of four-eyed basement dwellers, but the truth is that everybody can find something to enjoy in the weird world of science fiction. The best sci-fi works in both universal truths and hyperspecific detail, using fantastical yet fully-realized worlds to tell stories about our own.
Netflix‘s selection of good sci fi movies isn’t exhaustive, but there’s still plenty worth exploring nestled among the sequels and paycheck-generators. Keep on scrolling for 10 of the best sci-fi movies on Netflix streaming to watch right now, all taking you from the moon, the farthest reaches of space, and to the outer fringes of reality itself.
Harrison Ford’s lived long enough to see quite a few of his sci-fi franchises get the reboot treatment but this futuristic 80s flick still ranks as one of his best genre outings. Ford plays Rick Deckard, a blade runner charged with terminating four replicants — synthetic humans — who have escaped captivity and are plotting rebellion. Deckard treks across a dystopian Los Angeles, confronting ideas about humanity and morality while fighting off bioengineered humanoids and his fellow man.
Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller breathed new life into the tired A.I. trope when it landed in theaters a few years ago. The film focuses on a naïve young programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) who’s selected amongst a pool of applicants to evaluate a new A.I. lifeform. The poor kid is whisked away to a remote villa to spend time with the eerily-human-looking robot, Ava (Alicia Vikander) and her eccentric, often cruel creator Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a genius with an ego to match his talent. The film takes some twists you don’t expect, and Isaac gives cinema one of its greatest dance sequences, in case you needed more reason to watch.
The Wachowski sisters created one of the greatest sci-fi films in cinematic history with their mind-bending Matrix trilogy, but the original is hard to top. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, a young man unplugged from the matrix — a kind of alternate reality that keeps humans docile, so machines can harvest their life energy. He teams up with a band of rebels fighting the machines (Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus and Carrie-Ann Moss as Trinity) and faces off against a henchman named Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). The real draw of this trilogy, besides its inventive storyline, is the CGI effects. The movie also sports some of the most imaginative fight sequences you’ll ever see on the big screen.
Spike Jonze imagines a world in which Artificial Intelligence can become something more than just a personal assistant program. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a depressed introvert going through a divorce who starts up a relationship with an OS named Samantha. Things get serious before Theodore begins to realize that romance with an A.I. is more complicated than he thought. What follows is a thoughtful exploration of love, relationships, and the ways human beings find a connection in a plugged-in world.
Christian Bale and Sean Bean star in this sci-fi drama set in an oppressive future where all forms of emotion are outlawed. Bale plays a man named John Preston, who’s charged with enforcing the law, but when he accidentally forgets to take a dose of the medicine that suppresses feelings and artistic expression, he begins to question the system he upholds and, eventually, leads an uprising.
Bong Joon-Ho’s send-up of corporate farming and environmental abuses isn’t subtle. Tilda Swinton goes all-out as the CEO of an evil corporation only to be outdone by Jake Gyllenhaal’s broad turn as an unstable TV host. But its tale of an endearing, genetically modified “super pig” and the girl who loves him is effective and contains both some terrific action set pieces and the most affecting child/strange beast relationship this side of E.T.
Chris Evans stars in this sci-fi thriller from auteur Bong Joon-ho. The film, set years into the future following a devastating ice age caused by mankind, follows Evans’ Curtis who lives in poverty on a train that continuously circles the Earth and contains all that remains of human life. Curtis is part of the “scum” the people relegated to the back of the train while the “elite” enjoy the privilege of wealth and status that comes with living in the front. Curtis sparks a rebellion that ends in bloodshed and a devastating reveal when he makes it to the train’s engine room and discovers just how the elite have been fueling their operation. It’s a dark, grimy action piece that should give fans a new appreciation for Evans’ talent.
In an alternate version of 1941 where France has been led by a line of Napoleons and leading scientists mysteriously disappear, young April, her talking cat Darwin, and the shady Julius go searching for April’s missing parents. It’s an interesting take on a history where technological advancement isn’t a thing, where “steampunk” is reality and TVs and cars don’t exist. April’s journey starts in the dreary, stuck-out-of-time France but leads her to fantastical advancements that still make sense in the world we’re presented with. The heart of the film lies in the love that plucky, stubborn April has for those she cares about, and the film’s driven by charming animation and a genuinely interesting concept. It’s enjoyable action that’s just out-there enough for adults while being accessible for the young and young at heart.
A beautiful, claustrophobic sci-fi film, Moon focuses on Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an employee on an extremely isolated solo mission harvesting resources on the moon. With the end of his contract in sight, his hope of returning to his family is put in jeopardy once he has an accident in a lunar module and makes a startling discovery. It’s best not to know more than that about the story as it would pooch the twist. With Rockwell being pretty much the only actor in the movie, Moon obviously relies heavily on him, both for levity and existentially dramatic turns, and he doesn’t disappoint.
Scarlett Johansson stars in this sci-fi thriller about an other-worldly woman with a dark agenda. The film sees Johansson using her sex appeal to lure unsuspecting men to their watery doom while beginning to contemplate her own existence with every new partner she seduces. It’s a subtle reverse of rape culture, with themes of race and immigration mixed in, but if all of that goes over your head, you’ll at least enjoy seeing Johansson off a bunch of frat bros and rapists.
Netflix’s Brews Brothers is a ridiculously funny comedy series that does not hold back on the raunch factor. The show’s vulgar as hell and heartwarming as hell and offers a hefty helping of frivolity. Furthermore, it’s as breezy as a shandy and goes down as smoothly as a Guinness while focusing on two estranged brothers, Wilhelm and Adam Rodman (Alan Aisenberg and Mike Castle), who must work together to resurrect a struggling brewery. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for the audience), getting along with each other proves to be as tough as the task at hand.
The show, which hails from brothers Greg Schaffer (That ’70s Show) and Jeff Schaffer (The League), comes by its tough brotherly love honestly. Wilhelm and Adam stand at opposite ends of the beer-making and personality spectrums, but they’re both braumeisters in their own way. Aisenberg — who people will remember as Orange Is The New Black‘s naive CO Bailey, whose fate became hopelessly intertwined with the tragic outcome of Poussey — was gracious enough to talk with us about how much he enjoyed returning to comedy. We also chatted about beer, of course, and how Brews Brothers gets crazier than people will expect.
Lots of folks are Netflixing their way through quarantine. Beyond that, how are you spending your days?
I am at home in my New York apartment, alone. Lots of reading and writing, and the Peloton bike is keeping me sane. If not for that, I think I’d be going very crazy.
I know, and I bought it right before that, and all my friends were making fun of me for, you know, being one of those people, and now, they all look at me with envy and send me texts full of apologies for all of the ridicule they sent my way.
I watched Brews Brothers while sweating it out at home, and honestly, I needed this comedy. Do you find yourself gravitating towards any particular TV shows right now?
Yeah, I’m kind-of going through some comfort-series, so I rewatched Oh Hello On Broadway, Nick Kroll and John Mulaney’s show, which is on Netflix. I saw that three times when it was on Broadway, and that just brings me joy, and I started watching that over the weekend. The Office, and then some other stuff on Netflix that I love, like Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, which I think is a perfect sketch show, and Astronomy Club on Netflix. I’m just trying to surround myself with silly, fun things.
If you had to recommend this show based on people liking another show, what comparison would you make?
If you like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The League, you will love Brews Brothers. If you like laughing, I think you will like our show.
You guys shot the series last year, so it’s right on schedule.
Last summer, yeah. Between June and September of 2019, which now feels a different world ago, in downtown LA in the middle of summer.
Folks know you best from your tragic Orange is The New Black character, but you have otherwise gravitated more toward lighthearted roles. Was it refreshing to get back to those parts?
It was really nice. I loved my time on Orange. I came onto that show to play a funny character and really got to do that for like a year and a half, and it was the longest I’d spent on one job and got really comfortable with those people and that material. Then to really do my first dramatic work ever there, while very difficult, I felt at home. So, I could try things, and it was the perfect place to learn how to do that. But at the end of the day, I was still going to work and having to sob all day and to go to really dark places. So with something like Brews Brothers, I knew that I was going to show up to work and was still going to cry pretty much every day, but because I was laughing so hard, not because my character had done something really, really tragic. So it was really refreshing to wake up in the morning and know that I’m gonna have a very crazy 14 hours ahead of me, but they’re going to be filled with giggles and hard laughs and just positive thoughts.
Do you think people are prepared for the level of raunchy insanity? Like monks with “garbage accents” and the “Picasso of dildos.”
No, I don’t think people are ready for how crazy this show gets. As Greg [Schaffer] pitched out this season to us, and we started reading these scripts, we saw that this show never truly lets up. At any point when you think that our characters are comfortable with the situation and have gotten control of how things are going, Greg and the writers have found a way to push it, ten times further than you think. Once they settle again, they push it again, and the show keeps getting wilder and wilder and wilder. Even when I tell people about certain plotlines, they think I’m joking. Like, “How did they let you do that in a TV show?” And now that people are watching the show, they’re so excited to realize that we did do some crazy things.
Netflix
The show’s spicy but brings some sweetness, too.
Yeah, totally. The show is about brotherhood and heart. The show is loosely taken from our creator, Greg Schaffer and his brother, Jeff, who directed almost half the episodes and was there pretty much every day. A lot of stuff was based upon things that were in their relationship. I’m playing the Greg-like character, and Mike [Castle] is playing the Jeff-like character. And they love each other. I worked with these guys every day for a summer. They truly do have an incredible amount of love and respect for each other, and the characters in the show have the same thing. They fight, but they’re brothers, and they do eventually find a way to love each other, even with their differences.
You actually can no longer drink beer after you were diagnosed with Celiac Disease last year, right?
That’s true.
Do you miss it? Are you having cravings?
I do, it was kinda weird, during the first month when we were shooting. I found out that I couldn’t drink beer on a Monday and got the show on a Wednesday, and then Friday, I was flying to LA to shoot it. It happened very fast, and then during the first month, I really craved it because I was in a brewery. We shot this on location, at a real, formally-functioning brewery. And I was surrounded by, like, the best beer and a lot of beer snobs. And I couldn’t enjoy any of it, but in the second month, I finally let the craving go, and now, really in the last month, being stuck in my apartment and watching the show, I’m like, “Oh, I could go for a very heavy, double IPA right now.” I can’t have it, but I’m glad that I can at least watch people pretend to drink it while living vicariously through these characters.
Have you at least picked up any alternative vices?
Working out? No, I’ve become a fan of the Old Fashioned — whiskey, which is very different than a beer. That, or tequila, but I don’t think anybody’s gonna make a show about guys who make tequila anytime soon.
Which brother would you rather have a drink with?
Oh, I’d rather have a beer with Wilhelm. I think after spending so much time pretending to be sick of Alan’s antics, I think I actually am sick of Adam’s antics? Like, oh man, that is an annoying character, which I think is what makes it so worthwhile when we see him start to open up towards the end of our first season, and we see that he’s got a heart and is lovable. But no, Adam in the first couple of episodes, I don’t wanna be anywhere near him.
Your character’s name, Wilhelm, is that historical?
Yeahhhh. His name’s Will, and he renamed himself Wilhelm, which is after the guy who started the beer purity law in German.
The Duke of Bavaria, I think?
Yes, he’s someone who loves the history of beer, and he loves the passion, and so any way he can honor it, and changing his name to something that is pronounced “Vil-helm” in English is pretty annoying, and he found a way to do it.
There’s a debate in this series about whether beer should be in cans and bottles. Where do you stand?
There’s nothing more satisfying than a bottle. It’s like how seltzer comes in cans. Seltzer does not come in glass bottles, really. I think beer is an art form, and people who make art should have it present in way that is, you know, at a higher level. I’m Team Bottles.
Can I challenge you to name the four magical ingredients of beer?
Oh my god. I knew it when we were shooting the show. Let’s see, hops, water… barley… and… I’m embarrassing myself that I don’t know this! This is not good for my street cred.
Yeast and malts. Full disclosure: I totally looked this up before speaking with you.
Yes, yeast and malts! I’m gonna get so much hate mail for that, but here’s the thing: our show is written about really true beer aficionados, we had experts on set every day, who live and drink beer. And while my memory’s a little bit foggy because we shot awhile ago, and I haven’t been able to drink beer, the show is very authentic. We’ve shown it to folks from big beer companies, and they’ve been very open about the authentic experience in our show, in terms of what is represented in how breweries function. So don’t take my current ignorance for an indicator of what our show’s like.
Do you have any particular hopes for where a second season might go?
Oh yeah, this is my dream job. It’s a place where you are treated as a partner and that your voice is heard and to work on material that is really funny and carefree and just loose. Like this is the job that I wanna do for the rest of my life, but also, our first season has a very cool ending, and it’s very open-ended ending, and I think it’d be devastating as someone who is a fan of the show to not see where these characters go. Hopefully, people will watch our eight episodes, and by the end, they’ll feel the same. When they see where the season ends, they’ll wanna know where these guys are going.
You have to give Top Chef some credit. Whereas last week’s episode had a movie tie-in that came out last summer, this episode, in the midst of a pandemic, managed to tie into the only initially theatrical major movie release on the schedule, opening the same day. That’s pretty impressive, especially for a show that filmed almost a year ago and has to be shot sequentially, right? Granted, the movie was Trolls World Tour, but still. Hey, remember when time had meaning? Those were the days.
Kelly Clarkson, who does a voice in Trolls World Tour, introduced the quickfire challenge, in which the contestants all had to incorporate an ingredient from every color in the rainbow. At this point, my fiancee pointed out that Padma looks like a Na’avi from Avatar and Kelly Clarkson looks like a gnome and now it’s all I can see. I’m sharing this curse with you in the hopes I can rid myself of it.
NBC Universal
After the quickfire, the contestants split into teams for a progressive dinner, vegetarian style. And guess what! We had our first big Judge’s Table Beef of the season! Did someone get thrown under the bus? Were they not here to make friends? You bet your food-related forearm tattoo!
POWER RANKINGS
12. (-1) ((Eliminated)) Lisa Fernandes
NBC Universal
AKA: Salty. Aka: Grimes.
Surprise elimination! After narrowly losing out to Gregory (the quickfire king) in the quickfire challenge (which would’ve given her immunity), Lisa ended up at the bottom in the elimination challenge — thanks to some dry brussels sprouts. Most of the judge’s table segment was spent litigating whether Lee Anne’s crudité was underseasoned because of Lee Anne or because of SABOTAGE, with Lisa mostly flying under the radar. Which was why the outcome, Lisa going home, felt like such a shocking, Shyamalanian twist.
Her dish, incidentally, was a fried brussels sprout with raw apples dish that Lisa tried to defend on the grounds of rusticity. Tom wasn’t having that. It’s always a bad sign when a judge asks you whether your dish was supposed to be warm or not. It seemed like a bit of a cruel twist after Lisa nearly won the quickfire, but as I said last week, it was a pick-em race between Lee Anne and Lisa for who’d go home first. Turns out it was Lisa, the latest victim of when keeping it rustic goes wrong. Pour out some ceviche broth for Lisa, it looks like Top Chef Heaven just gained another eyebrow ring.
Let me just say what we’re all thinking: How the hell is Lee Anne still in this competition?
To recap: the big fight in this episode was over whether it was Lee Anne’s or Shenanigans’ (aka Brian Malarkey’s) responsibility to season Lee Anne’s dish. Which, by the way, was a crudité with butternut squash hummus. Leaving aside the question of why you would want squash in a hummus (a dish which is already vegan), there’s the question of whether you think you’re going to win this competition with crudité.
Really, a crudite? You’re going to win a chef competition with cut up raw vegetables? Who’s the judge, a horse? Leaving that aside, the one part of that dish that would seem to require actual “cooking” (sort of) — the seasoning — Lee Anne managed to delegate to someone else. Which allowed Lee Anne to somehow play the victim when Shenanigans (correctly) pointed out that he couldn’t have been responsible for the hummus being underseasoned. “Do you see the bus tracks on my back??” Lee Anne asked, in the promo soundbite repeated at every commercial break.
The conspiracy-minded might point out that Lee Anne was a producer on the show in between her runs as a contestant and say that that may account for the apparent special treatment. I don’t know. But the promo for next week’s episode showed Lee Anne’s mom fainting, so at least they’re getting some entertainment miles out her. The saving grace of this entire segment (and of Top Chef generally) is Tom Colicchio’s complete inability to play along with any traditional reality show drama.
Bravo
He knows he’s supposed to pander here but he can’t even pretend. I feel seen. Tom Colicchio is, as the kids say, a whole dang mood.
Did anyone else notice that Shenanigans seems to have bleached his dentures in between last week and this week? It looked like he had his veneers set to “halogen.” People, I’m saying his teeth looked white. Anyway, Shenanigans spent the whole quickfire alternately cackling as he blew up the ice cream machine by dumping skittles and pine cones into it and stuffing his face with cotton candy, which was perfectly on-brand for a guy who mostly reminds me of a metrosexual Buddy the Elf. Thank God for Grandpa Fancy, what would I even write about without him?
Later, Malarkey (Joe Biden hates this one weird contestant!) basically overcompensated for the relative failure of his overcomplicated curdled “curry pumpkin ice cream” in the quickfire challenge (which, it bears pointing out, for all the screen time it got, didn’t actually land him in the bottom three) and turned in an undercomplicated burrata salad in the elimination challenge. Too boring! You really have to thread the needle between “brave” simplicity and “boring” simplicity on this show. Gail Simmons said Brian’s Burrata was “a beautiful version of a dish we’ve seen a million times.” Meanwhile, much was made of his team’s decision to serve “two raw dishes in a row.”
But do you even think of burrata as a “raw dish?” All the damn crudités, crudos, and ceviches on this show and you’re going to complain about a Caprese salad? I think what’s actually at work here is something I call the Sopranos factor. You have to remember that Tom is an Italian from New Jersey, meaning any Italian dish you’ve seen someone eat on that show, Tom has probably had eight trillion times and possibly been force-fed by an antagonistic mother figure. It triggers Tom’s inner Jersey shame and he projects his anger onto the chef — see: him sending Grayson home for “Jersey red sauce” and the time he asked, “Did Snooki cook this?” One of the unspoken rules of Top Chef is that you can never make Tom feel like he’s at Il Vesuvio.
Anyway, Malarkey made a boring burrata and was kind of a spaz like always, but it seems like the show overplayed how bad he actually did in this episode. I’m interested to see what headwear/frame combo he brings to the next episode.
9. (even) Jennifer Carroll
NBC Universal
AKA: Calamity Jenn
Once again, Calamity Jenn made neither the top nor the bottom three in either challenge, so it’s anyone’s guess as to where she really belongs in these rankings. Hell, she didn’t even make the “Padma’s Angels” joke segment in the beginning of the episode. To be fair, it’s hard to imagine someone as sneeringly cynical as Calamity Jenn participating in any uplifting yaas qween girlpower stuff anyway. Jenn is punk as fuck and I can’t tell if she even knows it. Have you ever seen anyone look so comfortable in a chef’s coat and so uncomfortable out of one?
This week she had some minor drama when someone maybe turned up the burner on her cashew cream (SABOTAGE PART 2). It looked like she was about to lose it (which was relatable, I almost punched a hole in my wall when spilled an entire pizza the other night while attempt to transfer it to the oven), but instead she simply calmly remade the cashew cream and everything seemed hunky-dory. She went head to head with Bryan Voltaggio and it was unclear who came out ahead. Honestly, who knows where the hell Jenn really stands right now. Nonetheless, I eagerly await the moment something truly pisses her off and she finally hulks out.
8. (+2) Stephanie CMar
NBC Universal
AKA: C-Monster. Aka Underdog.
Once again in the quickfire, the C-Monster seemed to envision a smart dish — a fried spring roll with colorful interior dipped in peanut sauce — but couldn’t muster the technique to make it work. She got dinged for it being too sweet and not tightly wrapped and landed in the bottom three.
Then in the elimination challenge she went head to head with Gregory (undoubtedly one of the favorites) and seemed to pull off a win — with her cauliflower a la plancha with peri-peri sauce. Padma gushed “I love this dish” (as we’ve seen, Padma like-a da spice) and Beard Judge (I refuse to look up this guy’s name) said it was one of his favorites of the night. Sadly, she was on team Frazzle and the crudité/caprese combo dragged the C-Monster down like an anchor. She was ineligible for a top finish even if the dish warranted it. It was either a solid comeback episode and proof of resilience, or just Stephanie’s usual up-down pattern. Hard to say at this point.
Speaking of streaky, there’s Eric. I think Eric is on a bit of a roll and starting to look like the favorite we thought he was, but he didn’t quite manage a top three finish in the quickfire and him ending up on the winning team in the elimination challenge seemed partly coincidental. He received high marks for his “butternut squash and goat milk pudding with chocolate hazelnut soil” (any time you can get rated highly for a dish named after dirt it’s a feather in your cap) but hard to say if he would’ve beaten Nini straight up. Eric is drafting in the middle of the pack like the dude Jenn Carroll right now but I have to think his Kanye-esque delusions of greatness give him the edge.
6. (even) Nini Nguyen
NBC Universal
AKA: Broad City. Aka Quipz. Aka Bolo.
I’m still keeping the Nini faith but is it more religion than science at this point? This human emoji turned out a frankly pretty weak ass-looking purple potato gnocchi in the elimination challenge and ended in the bottom three. But she busted out her dessert skills in the elimination challenge with a peaches and cream creampuff, which looked good as hell and seemed to match her personality. It was hard to tell if she would’ve beaten Eric straight up, but the judges liked both of their dishes and Nini being on the losing team seemed mostly coincidental. “I want this dessert every day,” said Gail Simmons.
5. (+3) Karen Akunowicz
NBC Universal
AKA: Good Witch. Aka Glenda. Aka Aunt Kitty. Aka Rosie The Triveter
The Good Witch was thrilled to cook for lesbian icon Kelly Clarkson this week and she showed up for it, landing in the top three with a crunchy tartare. Then in the elimination challenge she was the only one to make a pasta dish for the vegetarian challenge, which honestly, seems like kind of a no-brainer.
Miramax
That’s a top three and a top-five finish in the same episode, if you’re keeping score at home. She easily squeaks into my top five. You never want to bet against a well put together lesbian in a cooking competition.
4. (even) Kevin Gillespie
Bravo
AKA: Hops. Aka Oops All Kevins. Aka Bachelor Fried Rice.
For his vegetarian dish, Kevin made an “heirloom tomato and melon salad with avocado tofu, fresh dates, and a California togarashi” which I will now sum up with a classic Simpsons gif:
Fox
I know what those words mean, but together they’re just a mess. Yo, dawg, is that a melon salad or a word salad?
Regardless, the judges seemed to like it, and anyway Kevin was paired against Brian Malarkey, whose dish Tom dynamited on the launch pad, asking pointedly, “Why did you serve us mozzarella and tomatoes [you fucking IDIOT]?”
That being said, Kevin didn’t make any identifiable mistakes this week so I’m keeping him locked in that the number four spot.
3. (-2) Bryan Voltaggio
NBC Universal
AKA: Flatbill Dad. Aka Bry Voltage. Aka Kyle Shanahan. Aka Linkin Clark Griswold.
Bry Voltage really let us down this week. He landed in the bottom three in the quickfire with his “mushy” shrimp and uni ceviche. “Looks like we’re both making ceviche, huh? Ha Ha ha,” Bryan said to Kevin during prep, dadly.
New Line Cinema
I mean two Top Chef contestants both making a ceviche at the same time? Imagine that! Anyway, the Dadliest Catch here made a classic Top Chef error: trying to cook for a celebrity guest judge the same way you would a professional food judge. Remember that country twerp from last season who dinged a tomato dish because “I’m really cautious about acidic things” and gave the win to an oatmeal? Kelly Clarkson wasn’t that much of a baby, but still, I got the feeling she wasn’t feeling that uni.
In the elimination challenge, Bry did a smoked beet with sprouted legumes (Bry Voltage lists sprouted legumes in the “hobbies” section of his social media profiles) going head to head against Jenn Carroll, with an inconclusive outcome. He ended up on the losing team, but on a team with Lisa, Lee Anne, and Brian Malarkey you know there was no way Voltaggio was ever in danger of going home. It was a bad week but I see him turning it around.
2. (+1) Gregory Gourdet
NBC Universal
AKA: Kravitz. Aka Hepcat. Aka Lids.
With Dad faltering this week, Gregory and Melissa solidified their one-two positions. Gregory edged out Melissa in the quickfire and won high marks for his charred carrots (with various other charred vegetable oils ) in the elimination challenge. But ultimately he lost out to Melissa’s corn soup. The quickfire win gave him both immunity and Top Chef‘s most coveted prize of all time: a trip to the Trolls World Tour world premiere! It’s unclear if he was ever able to collect on that prize after the movie was downgraded to a digital release, but some things are just too good to be true.
On the one hand, you would expect the avowed healthy yoga guy to crush a vegetarian challenge, but on the other, he had two top finishes to Melissa’s one, even if he didn’t win in the end. Gregory seems like the most consistently competent chef in this competition but he almost seems too chill to win it all.
1. (+1) Melissa King
NBC Universal
AKA: Zen Master. Aka Dimples. Aka Shutterstock.
Melissa is nearly as chill as Gregory and just as well put together, but also seems to lap the rest of the field in Big Dick Energy. Stop being so comfortable with yourself, it’s weirding me out. Melissa’s corn soup in the elimination challenge made me want to lick the screen (usually only Padma’s cleav– uh, never mind) and she seems to be peaking. Is she peaking too early? Is that even a thing? All I know is that every episode should dedicate five or 10 minutes to Melissa roasting Brian Malarkey.
We are five seasons deep into Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Better Call Saul, but so far, the two lead characters — Jimmy McGill and Jonathan Banks — have only pinged off of each other occasion. Their paths have crossed occasionally, and the two have done each other favors, but there’s nothing on Better Call Saul that has really bonded the two characters together. Yet.
That changed this week with the eighth episode of the season, “Bagman,” in which Jimmy and Jonathan spent most of the episode together traversing the desert on foot while Jimmy carried $7 million in two heavy bags, money meant to pay for Lalo Salamanca’s bond. This came after Mike used his sharp-shooter skills to effectively neutralize a small gang. The episode also featured a scene in which Jimmy drank his own urine in order to save off dehydration, and according to the folks on this week’s Better Call Saul podcast, the writers have been noodling episode titles for this episode of years: “Urine Trouble. Urine Danger. Urine the Money. Urine Over Your Head. Urine for it Now.”
It’s also the kind of episode that can bring two people together, and I think that by the end of the episode — after Jimmy put his life on the line while trusting Mike’s sharp-shooting skills — Mike gained an immense amount of respect for Jimmy. That bond, of course, is crucial to their loose partnership in Breaking Bad.
Speaking of Breaking Bad, this episode was shot in the same place that parts of “Ozymandias” — arguably the best episode of Breaking Bad, and one of the best episodes of any show ever — was shot. It was also directed by Vince Gilligan, who typically shoots premieres or finales. However, this season, Gilligan’s availability did not come open until he’d finished shooting El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.
“I put the right guy in the seat for this episode,” showrunner Peter Gould said during this week’s episode of the Better Call Saul podcast. “This was the hardest single thing I will ever do,” Vince Gilligan replies. The episode took seventeen-and-a-half days to shoot, which is twice the normal schedule for an episode on Saul.
But the episode itself has been a long time in the making, according to its creators, Gilligan and Gould.
“When we started the show,” Gould said on the podcast, “Vince and I were kicking around who could be on the show. Obviously, we’d have Bob [Odenkirk], and we’d call it Better Call Saul, if Bob is willing to do it. Who from Breaking Bad should be on the show?” they wondered. “And we both knew right away that it has to be Mike, It has to be Jonathan. He has to be on the show.”
And as we were both saying that,” Gould continued, “I think we both had the image of Midnight Run, which is personally one of my favorite movies.” Midnight Run is a 1988 action-comedy starring Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin about an accountant who is chased by bounty hunters, the F.B.I., and the Mafia after jumping bail. “And just the idea of [Bob and Jonathan] together kind of, well, for years, we were pitching that they were handcuffed together. And that’s what I thought the show was going to be when we started.”
The road-trip buddy movie obviously did not come to immediate fruition on the series, as Mike and Jimmy have spent most of their time apart. However, as Gould noted on the podcast, “on the 48th episode of the show, we finally got to do what I thought we would do on the second episode.” That was “Bagman,” the kind of episode they envisioned when they came up with the premise for this show, and the kind of episode that will arguably go down as one of the best ever of Better Call Saul.
So, I treated watching the original Police Academy as kind of an experiment. Now, I haven’t seen any Police Academy movie in quite some time – Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol was on cable a few months ago and I caught maybe 20 minutes of it – and I certainly hadn’t seen the original film in ages … to the point I couldn’t even remember the plot. But I had been thinking: taken in its own, without its six sequels, is the first Police Academy good? Because when we think of Police Academy, what do we think of? We think of a punchline franchise of never-ending bad movies that, yes, granted, some people like to watch, in some sort of half satisfying, half ironic kind of way.
But … what if only the first Police Academy existed? Would it now be considered some sort of raunchy ‘80s classic? (I don’t want to create too many scenarios, but I think if it had only one sequel, this still applies. People still talk about Airplane! and Revenge of Nerds today and those survived less than great sequels.) Take a movie like Bachelor Party. It’s still remembered fondly as this weird outlier when Tom Hanks was doing comedies with nudity. There’s a whole subset of these kinds of movies – Risky Business, 48 Hours, Stripes – that were “fine” (and, yes, today, they have their “problems”), but they belong to a group cemented as defining for the era. Without the sequels, would Police Academy be on this list?
It’s weird to think of it this way, but the original Police Academy was the sixth highest-grossing movie of 1984. It made more money than Splash. The five movies ahead of it – Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, and The Karate Kid – are all considered canon, as well the movie right below it, Footloose. After rewatching the original Police Academy again for the first time in I don‘t know how long, it makes a lot of sense that, on its own, it belongs on that list.
Directed by Hugh Wilson (his only time helming a Police Academy movie, he would later direct First Wives Club), Police Academy stars Steve Guttenberg as Carey Mahoney (he’d do three more of these movies) and Kim Cattrall as Karen Thompson (she, perhaps wisely, didn’t do anymore). So, I’m going to cut to the chase: Rewatching the first Police Academy it turns out its an actual movie. It doesn’t have near as many dopey jokes and pratfalls that the other movies do, which is probably a big reason people don’t watch this one as much. If a fan of the whole franchise is looking for “something stupid,” this offers the least amount of that. It’s also rated R (the only one of the franchise to have this rating), so it has a couple of raunchy moments, but not as many as I expected. (Though, two separate characters get unexpected oral sex while giving a speech. The movie actually ends with one of these events. I have no memory of this happening, so I’m now convinced I’ve never seen the unedited-for -television version of Police Academy.) Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment is rated PG-13 and it seems like the strategy became, “Well, we can’t do raunchy humor anymore, so instead we will just amp of the pratfalls and character tropes.”
Again, maybe most surprisingly, this is an actual movie. The plot is, basically, the mayor of a city in need (filmed in Toronto, but the city was never named) opens up the ranks of the police force to people who would never have qualified before. The current police force is run by overtly racist and sexist men who don’t like the fact that they now have to train people of color and women. Mahoney (Guttenberg) is facing a jail term unless he enrolls in the academy, a sentence he accepts, but with a clear goal of being kicked out. The formula feels like a mix of Animal House and Stripes, only with the establishment being clearly bad people. (It’s actually shocking how overtly racist the villains of this movie are. Something that was clearly toned down in the other movies.)
Mahoney eventually gets his wish of being kicked out, but has a change of heart when riots hit the city and his fellow cadets are being sent into harm’s way. Police Academy then ends with an action-packed third act shootout that I also do not remember.
Also surprising: the characters aren’t complete caricatures yet. Yes, Jones (Michael Winslow) makes his fun noises, but it doesn’t happen as often as we might think and always seems to serve the plot. There’s actually a payoff at the end when Jones mimics the sound of gunfire over a loudspeaker to stop rioters from attacking a police car. Hightower (Bubba Smith) is fleshed out more, and his character plays a pivotal role after he’s kicked out of the academy for turning over a police car after someone uses (you guessed it) a racist epithet. And Hooks’ (Marion Ramsey) timid voice, turning into a screaming terror, is actually pretty funny in this first movie – as opposed to being something we come to expect in all the subsequent films. And even Tackleberry (David Graf) is played as a human being with some warmth and compassion, in between is action and gun obsession. Again, the biggest surprise about Police Academy is it’s an actual movie with an actual plot with actual characters.
Also a little surprising is how many characters we never see again, who were replaced in the sequels by far more famous characters. Of course, there’s Kim Cattrall’s character, as Cattrall was destined for bigger and better things. Cadet Leslie Barbara is a major character in this film, yet we never see him again. But we don’t meet Zed and Sweetchuck until the second movie. And, yes, it is weird Steve Guttenberg did four of these movies. It’s a franchise that both launched his career and, frankly, probably hampered it, too. I wonder what Guttenberg’s career looks like if he had only done the first film?
According to Wikipedia, sourced to a Chicago Tribune piece that’s not online, Guttenberg is quoted as saying about the second Police Academy film, “I wasn’t too sold on doing the sequel. I didn’t think the script was as good as the first one. But it has been improved, and after I talked with [producer] Paul [Maslansky], I decided to give it another try.” No, those don’t sound like the words of someone completely invested in the project.
So, is it good? I mean, it’s “fine,” like most of the movies like this from that era. But I completely understand why it was as successful as it was in 1984 – and why each sequel saw less and less box office returns. And I also get why it’s maybe the least talked about of the movies. As Police Academy delved more and more into schlock, fans starting expecting the schlock. So, now, the original film is almost too nondescript to be particularly interesting to a rowdy, beer-drinking crew looking for stupid humor. It’s the best movie, but maybe the worst Police Academy movie, if that makes sense. But, on its own, it’s actually a pretty tight comedy with an actual plot. And, yes, I have convinced myself that if there were only one Police Academy movie, it’s would be considered today, and remembered today (with some reservations that any comedy from this era would have), pretty fondly.
Death Cab For Cutie’s commercial breakthrough came in 2003 with Transatlanticism, their fourth album. The group released a string of records before that, though, and their sophomore effort, We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. The album came out on March 21, 2000, and to mark the occasion, Ben Gibbard devoted his most recent livestream performance to the record.
Gibbard’s set last night featured only songs from We Have The Facts, as he played the full album front-to-back: “Title Track,” “The Employment Pages,” “For What Reason,” “Lowell, MA,” “405,” “Little Fury Bugs,” “Company Calls,” “Company Calls Epilogue,” “No Joy In Mudville,” and “Scientist Studies.”
Throughout the set, Gibbard also answered questions about the album and about the band during that era, so the stream is a real must-watch for fans of the album. Gibbard also noted that Barsuk Records is giving away an out-of-print first pressing vinyl copy of the album.
We’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of Death Cab for Cutie (@dcfc)’s classic “We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes” album by giving away an out-of-print first pressing on white vinyl from our archives! Retweet this post for your chance to win. #wehavethefactsandwerevotingpic.twitter.com/Tw6PGdJRGK
This was Gibbard’s second weekly livestream performance after he previously performed daily. Last week, he decided to devote part of his set to Fountains Of Wayne member Adam Schlesinger, who recently passed away due to coronavirus complications.
Watch Gibbard’s full performance above.
Death Cab For Cutie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
There is no telling what content stockpiles exist in the Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon bunkers, sparking a sure sense of wonder: what’s gonna be announced today? Is a formerly theater-bound film taking the expressway into people’s living rooms? Is it a series that somehow managed to get all of its episodes produced under the quarantine wire? It’s fun! And today brings news that Jerry Seinfeld is set to release 23 Hours To Kill, a new Netflix comedy special on May 5. This is also fun! And a little rare.
Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, occasional late-night appearances, and an active stand-up career (most regularly at the Beacon Theater in New York) have kept Seinfeld present in comedy culture, but he hasn’t gone all in with the explosion of comedy specials like most other comedy stars. 2017’s Jerry Before Seinfeld Netflix special was the one exception, reflecting on his early days in comedy. Prior to that, Seinfeld released HBO’s I’m Telling You For The Last Time, which dropped just three months after the final episode of Seinfeld and felt like a goodbye with him retiring a lot of his classic material. Released in 1987, Seinfeld Confidential marked his first stand-up special, introducing a lot of that same classic material.
Whether Seinfeld mixes in any nostalgia with this new special is, at this point, unknown. The press release doesn’t make mention of it and it seems like a pretty straight forward effort recorded at The Beacon Theater during one of his many concerts months before the present situation fully unfolded. Meaning even if it’s all-new material or that which hasn’t been on a special before, it won’t feel completely reflective of this exact moment. Which is a good thing. What Seinfeld does is connect us to realizations about the absurdity of normal life, offering a chance for us to laugh about it and ourselves. To say it’s a proven formula is an epic understatement. It’s also something I’m not quite ready to let go of. So, perhaps this special serves as a reminder and a connection to that thing that we can and should get back to in the hopefully near future. If nothing else, it’ll be good for a laugh and a reminder of Seinfeld’s legendary chops.
Once again, 23 Hours To Kill debuts on May 5 on Netflix.
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
When the British singer-songwriter Laura Marling first emerged in the mid-aughts as a 16-year-old prodigy, she seemed like an old soul. A leading light of the so-called “nu-folk” scene — a somewhat backhanded term invented by the English press to describe acts like Mumford & Sons and Noah And The Whale, which she briefly joined — Marling looked and sounded like she stepped off the cover of an old Fairport Convention LP. With her striking, wise-sounding vocals, penetrating confessional lyrics, and lilting traditional melodies, she made records that already sounded like they had existed for 40 years before she even exited her teens.
But even as Marling continued to grow her audience on 2013’s epochal Once I Was An Eagle, 2015’s underrated Short Movie, and 2017’s Grammy-nominated Semper Femina, she began to experience the side effects of launching a music career at such as young age. The wise-beyond-her-years quality of her voice, as well as the incisiveness of her songwriting, belied a tendency to youthfully quest in her personal life. At age 21, she relocated to Los Angeles, a decision that she later confided was an attempt to find herself as she entered young adulthood. She was also less famous in the US than at home in the UK. She seized this relative anonymity, cutting her hair and taking a job as a yoga instructor. Reflecting on this period years later, Marling admitted that she “had no identity. It was really, really, really difficult,” she says. “I was socially bankrupt.”
Another period of significant self-reflection preceded the making of Marling’s latest album out today, Song For Our Daughter. She moved back home to London, living not far from her oldest sister and niece; another sister moved into Marling’s home. She also decided to pursue a master’s degree in psychoanalysis, both because she was interested in that field of study and also as a way to make up for the time she lost by not going to college. (In an interesting parallel, Marling’s fellow singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten has also taken to pursing a psychology degree in her spare time away from music.) Even when Marling has worked in music in the years since Semper Femina, it was outside of her earnest folkie lane — she collaborated with Tunng’s Mike Lindsay in the experimental outfit LUMP, and composed scores for acclaimed British theater director and playwright Robert Icke.
The relatively settled nature of Marling’s life at the moment — as well as her interest in psychoanalysis — seems to have inspired her work on Daughter, which joins the ranks of Once I Was An Eagle and Short Movie as one of her very best albums. Marling has described Daughter as a song cycle addressed to the child that she might have one day, in which the prospective mother unloads wisdom and warnings about “all of the bullshit that she might be told,” as she sings on the title track. But at the risk of psychoanalyzing the psychoanalysis student, Song For Our Daughter also evokes what Carl Jung once described as the divine or inner child — these songs seem to be Marling’s way of dialoguing with previous versions of herself, and charting the progress she’s made as an artist and human being.
In that way Song For Our Daughter feels both like a culmination of Marling’s catalogue up to this point, and also like something of a fresh start. On the former point, Marling has returned to long-time musical partners Ethan Johns and Dom Monks, who assist in giving Marling’s songs that old-time early ’70s British folk feel, with lustrous acoustic strums playing off sumptuously recorded string sections in the manner of her best-regarded work.
But at the same time, this feels like the least fussed-over of her albums. Marling apparently valued immediacy above all else, often sticking to first takes and vigorous, straight-forward arrangements. While the album wasn’t recorded under quarantine — though our current crisis did bump up the album’s release by several months, coming just under a week after Marling announced the LP via her Instagram — it does feel more or less like someone singing to you from the other side of the kitchen table.
This casualness suits the songs, which are among the most conversational and direct that she’s written. The album’s catchiest number, “Strange Girl,” has the off-hand pop durability of a deathless Sheryl Crow radio hit. (The song’s standout warning — “Stay low, keep brave” — also functions as the album’s nutgraf.) “For You” is dreamier, but it has a similar resolve that speaks to a more grown-up perspective. “Love is not the answer,” she sings, “but the line that marks the start.”
Marling also plays off the work of others in fascinating ways. On the stunning “Alexandra,” Marling playfully engages with Leonard Cohen’s “Alexandra Leaving,” writing about the titular protagonist from a feminine perspective, while the tough but tender takes a line lifted from one of Ickes’ plays — “love is a sickness cured by time” — and spins it into a bittersweet lesson about navigating life’s peaks and valleys.
Marling’s adherence to tradition and her recent artistic and personal growth achieve a kind of perfect harmony on the album’s best song, “Fortune.” Set to an elegantly finger-picked guitar line that evokes the loveliest ancient British folk melodies, “Fortune” is inspired by Marling’s own mother keeping a “running away fund” when she was younger, which she spins into a breathtakingly pretty story song that lands on a tragic denouement I wouldn’t dream of spoiling. In “Fortune,” you can hear the budding folkie Marling once was and the supremely skilled master she has become, playing a song that is simple yet profound, like a personal journey through life.
Song For Our Daughter is out now on Partisan Records. Get it here.
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