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This series is meant to be a prequel to Ken Kesey's novel and subsequent film adaptation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). The book as the film was meant to be a critique of how mental health care was treated before changes were made in the 60's and 70's. It's meant to be a critique against conformity and oppression, as well as the shunning of marginalized people. It's also a critique against authoritarian rule. Those themes are addressed in this series, but, in radically different ways than the book or the film. Instead of telling the story from the perspective of the oppressed or marginalized, this series tells the story from the opposite perspective. Except, things are muddied or muddled because this series also wants the oppressors or people in the authoritarian roles to be seen as themselves oppressed or marginalized too. That would be fine, if both sides are sympathetic, and it was about a power struggle or tug-of-war between those both sides, but

This series is an adaptation of a Brazilian show on that country's Nickelodeon cable channel. The premise is about a teenage girl who meets three, slightly older, male ghosts and they inspire her to get back into music. Producing and writing partners, Dan Cross and David Hoge adapted the series. Cross and Hoge are two guys whose career together have been working on TV shows aimed at children. Their previous series, which they created, was Pair of Kings (2010), a series that aired on Disney XD. That series focused on teenagers. One of whom came from Hannah Montana , a popular teen sitcom. However, Cross and Hoge's work for the most part is aimed at kids who aren't even teens, but from teens to kids as young as 7. As such, their work is very silly, juvenile and the humor is very elementary school. As such, this series is perfectly fine as a diversion for people under the age of 14. It still doesn't compare to Glee (2009). Yet, if you're a person who is a fan of Hann

Jon Brown is an Emmy nominee for being a producer on HBO's Succession . Prior to Succession , Brown worked on a series called Loaded (2017), which was about people involved with video games. He came back and created this series, which is also about people involved with video games. However, the people here would not be so casual as to say they're "involved with video games." To call these people obsessed might even be an understatement. They live and breathe video games, particularly one video game, as it consumes every waking moment of their lives. They even play the game incessantly at their jobs. It doesn't seem as if their game play is interfering with their work. Their jobs have them sitting in front of a computer all day, so diverting to a video game probably isn't so detrimental, but while their work might not be suffering, their personal lives certainly are. The issue is that I'm not sure Brown's series is meant to satirize and in effect criti

Keith Knight is a cartoonist whose principal comic strip was The K Chronicles , which was published in the San Francisco Examiner , starting back in the 1990's. The K Chronicles was semi-autobiographical, focusing on his life as an African-American with a German wife. It also touched upon politics, centering on the presidency of George W. Bush. Knight is the creator of this series, which is an adaptation of The K Chronicles , with some definite changes. For example, the series is set in the present day not in the late 90's or early 2000's. It also changes the trajectory of his career, at least ostensibly. I'm not sure how true-to-life this series is, but it seems as though Knight has taken some liberties. I'm not convinced those liberties ultimately help the story he's telling. There's also other wrinkles that I'm also not convinced help here. Lamorne Morris ( The New Girl ) stars as Keef Knight, the proxy for the real Keith Knight. Keef is a cartoonist

The COVID-19 pandemic was discovered in December. By March, that particular coronavirus was spread all over the world, forcing all countries to take measures like shutting down businesses and mandating that people isolate and quarantine themselves. Basically, people had to put themselves in lock-down, limiting contact to people with whom they live. Often, that means certain people have to remain alone in their homes and apartments. This volume or series of short films is the result of 17 filmmakers attempting to create content while quarantined and utilizing social distancing. Often, that means instead of fancy cameras and professional crews, the filmmakers have to employ spouses and other family members, embracing minimal technology like iPhones. The opening film by black, French filmmaker Ladj Ly ( Les Misérables ) utilized a drone camera. Obviously, a lot of content online like YouTube are produced using such minimal technology. However, the past couple of years have seen Hollywood

If you've seen Sam Feder's documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (2020) , then you know that Hollywood has done poorly in portraying transgender characters in film. Even when Hollywood productions do a half-way decent job of portraying transgender people, often those roles aren't inhabited by actors who are transgender in real-life. Rain Valdez is a transgender actress-turned-writer-producer who was nominated for an Emmy for her web series Razor Tongue , a series she created because Hollywood often won't give transgender people the same opportunities or options to expand and do more. Isabel Sandoval similarly to Valdez decided to be the writer, director, producer and star of her features because Hollywood wasn't going to hand her any of it. Here, Sandoval plays Olivia, a transgender woman who is an immigrant from the Philippines. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, working as an in-home caregiver for an elderly woman of Russian heritage named Olga wh

The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and continues to this day, has had a global impact. One of those impacts has been on the refugee crisis. The situation was already precarious due to the conflicts in the Middle East like the Iraq War in 2003. So many people have had to flee Syria, escaping for their lives. It's estimated that around five million have been displaced to countries all over the map. About a million of them have been displaced in countries within Europe. Several documentaries have been released about the war and the subsequent refugees' journey to get out of Syria like Fire at Sea  (2016), Last Men in Aleppo  (2017) and For Sama  (2019). Nearly a decade since the start of the Syrian civil war, it makes sense that we're starting to get films and indeed narratives about refugees who are now in Europe and who are trying to make lives for themselves. It's not that dissimilar from films or even TV shows about immigrants who leave their homes for whatever

This French film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year where it won a directing award for its creator, Maïmouna Doucouré, a Parisian with parents from Senegal, a small country in West Africa that was a French colony that is predominantly a Muslim country now. It is about Doucouré's experience seeing the clashing of modern French culture and traditional Senegalese culture, focusing on the sexualization and hyper-sexualization of young girls. Based on a poster that was released online by Netflix, this film's distributor, people began protesting and speaking out against the film and calling for people to cancel their Netflix subscription, if Netflix didn't ban or remove this film. Some extreme responses have called the film "child porn" and contributing to pedophiles. I have to say that I wholeheartedly disagree. This film is not child porn and it doesn't "whet the appetite of pedophiles" as Representative Tulsi Gabbard said in a twe

This is the adaptation of the 2011 debut novel by Donald Ray Pollock. The novel follows Pollock's collection of short stories called Knockemstiff (2008), which are based on Pollock's experiences growing up in Knockemstiff, Ohio. Pollock's fiction has been described as "Hillbilly Gothic." Gothic fiction is a type of horror that focuses on crime and the darker acts of humanity, such as murder and ensuing mayhem. It just so happens that this horror centers on people who live in the rural area in and around Appalachia. Directed and co-written by Antonio Campos ( Christine and Simon Killer ), the film captures that Hillbilly Gothic rather well. It's a film that could exist in the same universe as Netflix's Ozark , except Campos' film takes place from 1945 to 1965, more capturing the era that was Pollock's childhood. Pollock himself is the narrator pointing out insights into the thoughts and feelings of the characters caught in this era and area, which

Andrew Hinderaker adapted the 2014  Esquire  magazine article by Chris Jones, which detailed what it would be like to be in space for an extended period of time. The article focused on Scott Kelly who was planning to spend a year in space on board the International Space Station (ISS), doing so with a Russian cosmonaut. The article provides information on what people in space would have to do in terms of their health and well-being, as well as mechanical problems that might occur for long spans. That information would be useful for what could be expeditions beyond the Moon, expeditions to other planets like Mars. Such an expedition to Mars would require a bit more organization and development than what humans currently have, but Hinderaker's series imagines that organization and development already being in place, so that a crew of five people could embark on a journey to the fourth planet from the Sun. The series feels like a more modern-day version of Ron Howard's  Apollo 13

On March 19, California ordered all residents to stay at home and enact social distancing in order to slow the spread of COVID-19. It was the first state in the United States to do so. Obviously, this seriously affected 40 million people in that state, including those in the Hollywood industry. The stay-at-home or shelter-in-place order was its most strict until May 12. That same week, this series was conceived by actress-turned-producer, Joanna Johnson ( The Fosters and Hope & Faith ). Johnson's series is about contemporary Californians dealing with this stay-at-home order, as it's happening. By the time Johnson got to work on the series, Saturday Night Live at Home had already aired in late April. Saturday Night Live at Home was the cast and crew of NBC's Saturday Night Live doing that show with everybody abiding by the stay-at-home order in the state of New York. Johnson's series though would also not begin airing until after NBC's A Parks and Recreation