Under New Management (2009)

Shortly after season two of Fleabag dropped on Amazon Prime in 2019, Barack Obama put it on his list as one of his favorite television series of the year.

Apatow’s latest film, The King of Staten Island, is no different. The movie tells the story of Scott (Pete Davidson), the 24-year-old son of a deceased firefighter who passed away when Scott was 7

In addition to the cast being delightfully diverse this time around, the film was just loosely-plotted and action-packed enough to keep a casual fan like myself entertained. While I do agree that the writing of Cole left much to be desired for an original character thrust into a preconceived universe, none of the characters seemed particularly fleshed out in terms of personality; however, I think that's to be expected when you're watching a film literally inspired by a video game.

Adam McKay might have been more concerned with cramming cameos than he was in this story which is a bloated criticism of the rich and famous… delivered unto us by the rich and famous. 

These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.

The newest in a long line of Cinderella adaptations, Amazon’s Cinderella (2021) prizes girlbossification above the very story it tries to adapt.