(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Show: New Girl
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix
The Pitch: Charming weirdo Jess (Zooey Deschanel) moves into a new apartment with three male roommates after a devastating break-up. It turns out that her new roomies (played by Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Lamorne Morris) are also charming weirdos. Quirky friendship ensues and it is all very, very funny.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: On paper, there is literally nothing special about New Girl, which ran on Fox from 2011 through 2018. In fact, it sounds downright hacky and tired: a quirky girl has three male roommates?! What is this, 1972? But while that concept may be a tough pitch in an age where television comedy has grown increasingly experimental and daring, New Girl has something you cannot fake or manufacture: lead actors with undeniable, unmistakable chemistry that works no matter which combination of characters share the screen in a given scene.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: Cobra Kai
Where You Can Stream It: YouTube Premium
The Pitch: Decades after their 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament bout, a middle-aged Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence find themselves martial-arts rivals again.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: This is a show that, by all accounts, shouldn’t have been great. It’s produced on a low budget for YouTube’s failed premium original Netflix competitor and features a bunch of actors from the 1980s reprising roles their childhood. The series presents a legacy-quel to The Karate Kid, but imagined from the point of view of the film’s villain Johnny Lawrence (played by the great William Zabka). We’ve heard time and time again that there are two sides to every story. Now imagine that the classic Karate Kid story was only Daniel’s view of the events.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Movie: The Nice Guys.
Where You Can Stream It: HBO Now, HBO Go, Max Go
The Pitch: Depressed private detective Ryan Gosling and burly bruiser Russell Crowe end up joining forces to solve a mystery in 1977 Los Angeles.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: Shane Black brings his usual twisty plotting and laugh-out-loud hilarious dialogue to a good old fashioned detective story. Criminally underrated when it arrived in theaters, The Nice Guys has become a kind of cult classic, and rightfully so – it’s funny as hell, and features career-best performances from both Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: Fruits Basket (2019)
Where You Can Stream It: Crunchyroll (with subtitles), Hulu (dubbed in English)
The Pitch: Recently orphaned high school teenager Tohru Honda finds herself living in a house with her handsome classmate Yuki Sohma and his two cousins — Yuki’s hot-headed rival Kyo, and the group’s de facto guardian, Shigure. But she soon discovers that Yuki’s family harbors a strange secret: they’re cursed to transform into an animal of the Chinese zodiac when hugged by a member of the opposite sex. Tohru quickly becomes entangled in the Sohma family’s lives and, through her cheery disposition and unflagging kindness, begins to change the embittered family members’ lives for the better.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: Getting over the wacky romantic-comedy premise of this series is always the biggest hurdle for anyone starting Fruits Basket. The idea of several hot men who transform into cute animals living under the same roof of a naive girl has led many to miscategorize Fruits Basket as a reverse harem anime — a trope that describes a fluffy romance between one girl and her many varied suitors. But I promise you that this somewhat silly premise gives way to a sensitive and moving slice-of-life series that manages to profoundly examine depression, alienation, abuse, and the healing power of love.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Movie: Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix
The Pitch: The movie chronicles the adventures of a gentlemen thief named Arsène Lupin III. As the headline indicates, that really should be all you need to know, but on the off chance that you need more convincing, it also features: car chases, ninjas, an evil count, a princess in distress, a secret ring, a clandestine counterfeit operation, a femme fatale, a dogged inspector, gorgeous locations, a strong dose of derring-do, and much more.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: I only watched 1979’s The Castle of Cagliostro, the feature directorial debut of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, for the first time last summer, but it instantly became one of my favorite animated films of all time. If I were to imagine a platonic ideal of the perfect action adventure movie, this would be pretty damn close to it. In addition to its terrific story and characters, which I’ll get to in a second, its locales are what made me think of this as a contender for this column. We’re still only a few weeks into self-isolation, but I’m sure many people who aren’t used to working from home are starting to go a little stir-crazy. So why not be whisked away to lovely Cagliostro, a fictional European destination featuring a mixture of classicism and retro-futurism? The painted backgrounds are gorgeous across the board, and the story’s setting – bouncing from ancient ruins to village rooftops, soaring towers to creepy dungeons – will make you feel like you’ve traveled the world in an hour and forty minutes. Read More »
(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: Jeopardy!
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix and Hulu
The Pitch: “This long-running game show has survived for decades, brushing off imitators, smiling along with parodies, and rarely changing its perfect format even as the entertainment landscape around it has shifted in profound ways.” “What is Jeopardy!.”
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: I have incredible memories of sitting on the floor of my grandparents’ living room, watching Jeopardy! with them after school. To say that this long-running game show has been in the background of my entire life is not an understatement – it was on the air years before I was born and I imagine it will exist, in some capacity, long after I’ve shuffled this mortal coil. And yet, Jeopardy! isn’t just a nostalgic rush. It isn’t just something that makes me feel warm and fuzzy about my late grandmother and those lazy afternoons. Jeopardy! has been around for so long because it’s the best damn game show of all time, a no-bullshit experience that sets out to do a handful of things better than anyone else and does so five days a week.
And while I watch DVR recordings of new Jeopardy! episodes every day after work, the fact that the show is currently offering select episodes on Netflix and Hulu is an extra treat and a wonderful way to see how the show has changed (or rather, not changed) over the decades.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: The Endless Adventure
Where You Can Stream It: YouTube
The Pitch: “Greetings adventurers! We’re Eric & Allison, a travel couple on a journey to find the most interesting places and unique foods this planet has to offer! We’ve traded in our steady paychecks and permanent home for a life of travel and adventure. Come along and see the world with us!”
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: If you’re anything like me, you’re probably already feeling a bit cooped up during self-quarantine. What better way to escape your home during this period of social distancing than by traveling virtually around the world with friends you never knew you had? Eric and Allison are a hipster couple who traded in their full-time jobs to travel the world with plans to document it for a YouTube channel. Four years and nearly 650 videos into their journey, they have found a way to make their dream a reality.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix
The Pitch: Former Saturday Night Live featured player and Comedy Central’s Detroiters creator and co-star Tim Robinson teams up with fellow SNL writer and his Detroiters co-creator Zack Kanin to deliver a series of offbeat comedy sketches mostly featuring characters that need to desperately leave, would be wise to leave, or are being implored to leave a variety of awkward, confrontational and goofy situations.
Why It’s Essential Viewing: Saturday Night Live is still largely considered the gold standard for sketch comedy, even if you always hear someone saying that the current cast isn’t as funny as the previous generation, which has happened with every new roster of players since the beginning of the show. But that doesn’t mean SNL is the only place to find great sketch comedy. In fact, sometimes the style of the series doesn’t lend itself well to certain comedians’ sensibilities. Such is the case with Tim Robinson. But that’s not always a bad thing. Read More »
(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: Nailed It!
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix
The Pitch: A baking competition show featuring the world’s worst bakers.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: There’s nothing riding on Nailed It! It’s about as laid-back a show as you can get – even when compared to other laid-back baking competitions, like, say The Great British Bake Off. No one takes the competition angle seriously, and, best of all, the contestants – who are truly terrible bakers – will make you feel better about your own culinary skills.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Movie: Roman Holiday
Where You Can Stream It: Crackle, Tubi
The Pitch: The 1953 romantic-comedy, directed by William Wyler, stars Audrey Hepburn in her Oscar-winning role as a princess touring Europe, who finally has had enough of her suffocating lifestyle and runs away in the middle of the night while in Rome. She’s discovered, passed out in the streets, by a frustrated American journalist (Gregory Peck) who sees the opportunity for the biggest scoop of his career when he realizes who she is. But after they spend the day roaming around the Italian city, the blossoming romance between them throws a wrench in his scheme.
Why It’s Essential Viewing: It’s Audrey Hepburn, in her star-making role, frolicking around Rome with Gregory Peck, AKA Atticus Finch! What more could you ask for? And with all of us stuck inside and unlikely to take that trip to Italy that we’ve all been longing to make, this Roman Holiday is the next best option. But my favorite part of Roman Holiday is that though it’s billed as a frothy romantic comedy set to the sunny backdrop of a gorgeous European city, there’s an undercurrent of melancholy that cuts right through it.
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