currently consuming: air, bad sisters, and sims
sponsored by ben affleck and dunkin donuts
Back with more culture! If you count “the ultimate life simulation game” as culture, which I do.
Thankfully, I’m balancing it out with a movie that has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and a TV show that has a 100%, so I’m not completely wasting your time. You’re welcome!
Air
After a long movie drought brought on by Oscars season exhaustion, Air was the perfect film to lure me back to the theater: under two hours, stacked cast, impeccable pacing, and low stakes drama that feels high stakes. (It’s just about a contract, after all.) The movie gets a lot right, from a killer ‘80s soundtrack to a quietly commanding Viola Davis, but its chief achievement is what I think of as the Titanic Effect: it manages to create suspense even though the audience knows exactly how it ends. I found myself crossing my fingers that Sonny would pull off the deal, forgetting for a moment that Michael Jordan is a billionaire and Air Jordans are the most iconic shoes ever made. As someone who hates sports but adores a sports-adjacent movie—looking at you, Miracle—this one was a home run for me. 🙂
Bad Sisters
Bad Sisters was recommended to me by none other than Kathy Deadrick, who’s proved herself to be on the cutting edge ever since she introduced me to Hokas several years before they became cool. This Apple TV gem is a dark comedy with a ton of heart, anchored by an Avengers-like ensemble of Irish actresses, including Bono’s nepo baby. (She’s so good that her dad should be worried about becoming known primarily for being Eve Hewson’s parent.) Over the course of the season, you’ll fall in love with the charming and complicated sisters—a love that’s matched only by your hate for the heinous and all too realistic villain. His mundane cruelty, which escalates into abject evil, is only watchable because you know from the jump that he ends up in a casket. How he gets there is revealed through an expert use of flashbacks and a slow drip of information that builds into a tsunami of a twist. Given this rocky season of Ted Lasso, I nominate this as Apple TV’s new darling.
Sims
Like our Saturn return, it’s the destiny of every 20-something to have a Simaissance. And EA Games clearly knows that, because they’ve made Sims 4 free to download and easily compatible with Macs. I’m happy to report that the game is as mind-numbingly enjoyable as ever—though I’ll admit that virtually “paying bills” and “cooking dinner” is a little less fun than when I was a nine-year-old who never had to do those things in real life. Still, it scratches a specific entertainment itch for me, when I simply can’t read another page or watch another TikTok. Sometimes, I just need to balance all the consuming with something generative. I realize I’m not creating anything of actual value, like a meal I can enjoy or art I can look at—but I am creating a sick house for my Sim family, and that has to count for something.