Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

No Shame by Lily Allen:
Every artist seems to go through an album fatigue phase where they do a lot of mellow songs and sound in need of a long nap (see also, KT Tunstall's Crescent Empire album, as well as Muse's Second Law album). Lily Allen is no exception. This album has a few pleasant songs but very little that is memorable or in the same vein as her older songs. Also, the album cover looks like her label texted her for art on a deadline and she sent them the last blurry picture from her phone.

Final Grade: C+

Arrested Development, Season Four Remix:
This is a re-editing of the awful fourth season of Arrested Development intended to overcome its core limitation: the fact that most of the characters are not interesting enough for an extended storyline and need the rest of the cast to play off of. Early episodes are definitely more like the originals, but this is not enough to make the fourth season stories any more interesting. It's telling that the best parts of the first episodes are newly-inserted flashbacks to existing scenes from the third season. I wanted to watch through this before starting the new fifth season, but gave up after just four episodes. It was interesting to see salient members of the cast of Outsourced (including the taxi driver that Mike went to high school with) in the India episode. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: Not Rated

Downsizing (R):
This is an awful, pointless, overly long movie in which Matt Damon is shrunk down to help conserve our natural resources. The movie focuses on the story of the most boring character in the cast and it takes too long to get to any of the interesting characters. A whole ton of wasted worldbuilding potential can be found here.

Final Grade: D

Everything Sucks, Season One:
This comedy about high schoolers in the 90s feels a little like Stranger Things without all of the annoying fantasy bits. It drags a good deal in the middle but is over quickly and ends well. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B-