Watch Pulling

Watch the BBC show Pulling. You can always tell a show is going to be good when the first scene is a disinterested hand job AND a pun. I had never heard of the show before but Netflix knew me well enough to recommend it, bless them. It’s the new the Office/Extras, with only the most tolerable splash of Ab Fab. The main character is like a sweeter, younger Catherine Keener, but like, a total slut. She cavorts about town with a drunken teacher and a horny fatty, and all sorts of uncomfortable sex acts are simulated for your amusement. If that isn’t convincing enough for you than you are being irrational and maybe you’re on your period.-KA

Watch Super

Super is a little flick starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Paige, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon. Big names for a movie there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of, right? You’d think that the characters from the first scene of Juno being in a movie with Liv and the Bacs (pronounced Bakes) would be well advertised, but Super isn’t exactly a normal mainstream story (I’ll keep the spoilers to a minimum) . It’s about a normal, but pretty pathetic dude (Rainn Wilson) who loses his wife (Tyler) to a drug dealer (the Bacs). This pushes him to dress up in a red costume, and fight crime as the Crimson Bolt, all with the goal of winning her back. Ellen Paige is a comic clerk who becomes his sidekick, Bolty. I know what you’re thinkings right now “Isn’t that really similar to Kick Ass?” and on the outside, yeah it shares some qualities: Normal dude deciding to become a super hero, girl with a foul mouth and violent tendencies, drug dealers and such. But really if that bugs you, you can’t enjoy any movie ever, because there’s no such thing as a new movie. What does set Super apart, is it stays in the real world the entire time. Kick Ass attempted to, and didn’t at all. It got fantastical by the end, where Super is just a dude bashing people in the head with a wrench. And it’s fucking awesome. It’s also the only movie I can think that deals with the pathos of a normal person deciding to fight crime in tights. Normal people don’t make that decision, you would have to be deranged or severely fucked up one way or another, and Super shows you that in a harsh light. You will be uncomfortable. You will cheer excessive violence. You will squirm in delight and horror at the same time, than you will squirm how delighted you were at the horrible things. James Gunn is the writer and director (Slither, The Specials, Scooby-Doo [weirdly enough]) behind this gem, and he wrote it about ten years ago, far before Kick Ass was around, if you’re still naysaying it as a rip off. This dude knows how to mix genres and tones near perfectly, and can take you from sweet to awful faster than your brain can process it. So do yourself a favor and see a superhero flick that’s gonna make you think a little more than let’s say the Green Lantern will.

It’s now ONDemand, so you can watch it there if you or a friend has it (Best Buy often has OnDemand set up, so you can sit in one of their big couches for a couple of hours and make everyone uncomfortable)!

-MG