Cut the crap: our weekly streaming column recommends one perfect thing to watch

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

“Assistant Wanted, Female,” a season 1 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, written by Treva Silverman and directed by Peter Baldwin, and originally airing on CBS on November 21st, 1970. Over the course of seven seasons, the groundbreaking sitcom followed Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore), an unmarried career woman working as a broadcast news producer at a Minneapolis TV station where the demands of the job regularly interfered with her personal life. In “Assistant Wanted, Female,” Mary’s boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner) allows her to hire some help, and she takes a chance on her snobbish, conceited neighbor Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) who has a hard time taking orders from someone she considers her inferior.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

“Morris Day and The Time,” an episode of Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus, an animated documentary series on Cinemax. For two seasons now, Tales from the Tour Bus has collected musicians’ wildest anecdotes about life on the road, playing alongside showbiz legends. Season 1 covered country music stars; season 2 focused on funk. The Morris Day episode is unusual, in that its true subject is really Day’s friend and rival, Prince. Each tale is introduced and narrated by Beavis and Butt-Head / King of the Hill creator Mike Judge, who adds his own personal opinions and analysis, explaining who these performers are and what their music means.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

V for Vendetta, the 2006 movie adaptation of the politically charged graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist David Lloyd. Set in a dystopian future England, the film stars Natalie Portman as idealistic young woman Evey Hammond, who becomes a protégée of “V,” an anarchist revolutionary (Hugo Weaving) in a Guy Fawkes mask. The original comic book series debuted in the UK in the early 1980s, as a furious reaction to the authoritarian bent of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — and in particular, the nation’s rising intolerance toward its ethnic minorities and LGBTQ citizens. When the collected edition of V for Vendetta was published at the end of the decade, it connected with the same adventurous adult-fantasy fans who’d devoured Moore’s previous deconstructions of pulp adventure, in his comics series Swamp Thing, Miracleman, and Watchmen. 

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

“The Entire History of You,” a season 1 episode of the science-fiction anthology series Black Mirror. The story is set in a near-future society where the hot technology is a skull implant that turns memories into first-person video clips, which people can either rewatch themselves or share with others. Toby Kebbell plays Liam Foxwell, a paranoid attorney who obsessively scrutinizes the interactions between his wife Ffion (Jodie Whittaker) and her friend Jonas (Tom Cullen), determined to figure out whether they’re having an affair.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

“Joker’s Favor,” a 1992 episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Ed Begley, Jr. provides the voice of Charlie Collins, a harried Gotham resident whose road rage gets him into huge trouble when the driver he’s cursing at turns out to be Batman’s archnemesis, the Joker. After pleading for his life, Charlie is let off the hook, provided he promises to answer the call whenever the Joker needs a hand. When Charlie realizes this “favor” might involve helping the supervillain kill Commissioner Gordon and a room full of cops, he tries to figure out how to warn Batman — and how to convince the Caped Crusader he’s just a patsy. 

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Election, a 1999 political satire directed by Alexander Payne and co-written by Payne and Jim Taylor, adapting Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name. Set in an Omaha, Nebraska high school, the film stars Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, an energetic overachiever who irritates her smugly idealistic history teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) with her aggressive self-promotion.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Gosford Park, a multi-Oscar-nominated 2001 drawing-room mystery, written by Julian Fellowes and directed by Robert Altman. A riff on the classic “murder at a sprawling country estate” story, the movie features a cast of accomplished UK and American actors — including Helen Mirren, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Fry, Clive Owen, Emily Watson, Kelly Macdonald, and Ryan Phillippe — playing 1930s rich folks and servants, gathered for a weekend of dining and hunting that gets interrupted by their host’s suspicious death. Altman and Fellowes have fun with the rigidity of the British class system and the arcane rituals of service — just as Fellowes would do again a decade later with the creation of hit TV series Downton Abbey.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Waking Life, an animated film that premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival alongside Tape, a low-budget drama shot on a camcorder. Both films were directed by Richard Linklater, and as his first films following his major studio release The Newton Boys, they helped cement his reputation for unpredictability. But where Tape mostly received polite nods, Waking Life won over viewers who were beguiled by Linklater’s attempt to use animation to realize the landscape of dreams. 

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Mama, a 2013 horror film released during the sleepy January movie season. Its origins, however, date back to 2008. That’s when “Mamá,” a short film directed by Argentinian director Andy Muschietti and produced and co-written by his sister Barbara Muschietti, began making the festival rounds. There, it caught the attention of fantasy / horror director Guillermo del Toro, who later called it “one of the scariest little scenes I’ve ever seen.” How scary? This scary:

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

“The Gorg Who Would Be King,” a 1987 episode of the HBO children’s series Fraggle Rock, and one of the last installments of the show’s original five-season run. The story follows Junior, the prince of his giant-sized race, as he shrinks down to the size of a Fraggle, and gets a lesson from the much smaller species about what it means to be part of a community. Credited to screenwriter Laura Phillips and director Terry Maskell, “The Gorg Who Would Be King” delivers a clear moral message aimed at an elementary-school audience. It’s also a meaningful exploration of Fraggle Rock’s interconnected ecosystem, where Gorgs, Fraggles, and the tiny worker-creatures the Doozers live symbiotically.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

The Most Dangerous Game, a 1932 movie adaptation of Richard Connell’s short story of the same name. Joel McCrea plays Bob Rainsford, a big-game hunter who gets shipwrecked on a private South American island belonging to a fellow sportsman, the Russian Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks). When Rainsford meets Zaroff’s guests, he becomes smitten with another castaway, an elegant young woman named Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray), who warns the new arrival that ever since she washed ashore, she’s seen multiple occupants of the Count’s lavish estate disappear into the surrounding jungle, never to return. Bob soon finds out why, during a conversation about hunting with their host, who confesses that he rediscovered his passion for the chase once he started going after human prey.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Zodiac, a 2007 true-crime procedural about the San Francisco reporters and police detectives who spent years trying to figure out the identity of “the Zodiac killer,” a serial murderer who taunted the public and the authorities with cryptic clues, beginning in summer 1969. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a political cartoonist and puzzle enthusiast who becomes fascinated with the Zodiac mystery, and works with jaded writer Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and dogged cop Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) to help narrow down the list of possible suspects. Screenwriter James Vanderbilt and director David Fincher recreate some of the Zodiac crimes in horrific detail, and they include multiple nerve-jangling scenes of the investigators confronting potential killers. But this is more a movie about the punishing grind of putting a case together, set against the backdrop of a changing 1970s California.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, a 2012 documentary about the four intense years in the late 1980s when one of the most popular syndicated TV series was G.L.O.W., a women’s wrestling program. The show combined the serialized cartoonish antics of big-time wrestling with character-driven sociopolitical satire and corny vaudeville-style blackout sketches, all performed by athletes and actresses in skimpy clothes. Director Brett Whitcomb tells this story with an emphasis on the women themselves, getting many of the biggest G.L.O.W. stars to go on the record about the chaotic details of their Las Vegas-set production and how their lives changed — for better, and sometimes for worse — after they became television personalities.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

The first episode of Derry Girls, a sitcom created by Northern Irish playwright Lisa McGee for Britain’s Channel 4. Based loosely on McGee’s experiences growing up in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the early 1990s, in the waning years of the sectarian violence familiarly dubbed “the Troubles,” the show acknowledges the era’s mounting tensions while also telling lighthearted, hilariously profane stories about teens being teens. The first episode — titled “Episode One” — introduces the cast of Catholic schoolgirls. Saoirse-Monica Jackson plays Erin, an intensely self-conscious youngster who is stuck rooming with her weirdo cousin Orla (Louisa Harland). The two are pals with the skittish Clare (Nicola Coughlan) and the cocky Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell). At the start of a new school year, Michelle has been saddled with her own cousin, James (Dylan Llewellyn), an English kid assigned to be the first male to attend the all-girls Our Lady Immaculate College. (The authorities are afraid he’ll be beaten up at a boys’ school.)

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Smokey and the Bandit, a cross-country car chase comedy starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, and Jackie Gleason that became the second-most popular movie of 1977 (after a little film called Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope). Reynolds stars as Bo “The Bandit” Darville, an easygoing trucker who agrees to take a couple of deep-pocketed eccentric brothers up on their offer to transport a load of Coors beer to Atlanta, knowing that it’s forbidden to bring it east of Texas.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Galaxy Quest, a 1999 science-fiction comedy in which the cast members of a canceled but still beloved Star Trek-like television series are whisked away by Thermians, a high-minded but credulous alien race. Not realizing their heroes’ adventures are fictional (they can’t grasp the concept of storytelling), the Thermians have modeled their civilization after the series and its lofty values. Oh, and they’re also hoping the actors can help defend them against a murderous, reptilian adversary.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Bad Rap, a 2016 crowdfunded documentary about four Asian-American rappers trying to overcome music industry preconceptions. Shot over the course of a few years, the film deals with the grind of playing small clubs, and gets into how hard it can be to impress agents and record label A&R reps, who often see a Korean or Chinese face and presume a limited market. Bad Rap is provocative and dramatic, as rappers Dumbfoundead, Rekstizzy, and Lyricks end up at career crossroads, making choices that could determine whether they ever break wide. But the biggest reason to revisit this documentary — by director Salima Koroma and producer Jaeki Cho — is the fourth rapper covered: Nora Lum, a musician and comedian better known by her stage name, Awkwafina.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Cop Car, an offbeat crime film directed by Jon Watts and co-written by Watts and Christopher Ford. Set in rural Colorado, the movie stars Kevin Bacon as a corrupt sheriff who loses his cruiser while he’s in the woods secretly burying a body. James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford play Travis and Harrison, the two preteens who steal the car after they find it abandoned in the middle of nowhere with the keys inside. The movie cuts between two parallel storylines, covering the boys’ dangerous day of joyriding around the surrounding farmland while also tracking the sheriff’s increasingly desperate efforts to retrieve his vehicle without compromising his illegal operations. A hit at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, Cop Car established the then-33-year-old Watts as a superb visual storyteller, with a knack for eliciting uniformly lively performances from a mix of youngsters and Hollywood vets. Six months after Cop Car’s festival debut, Watts was announced as the director of 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Yellow Submarine, a 1968 animated feature in which cartoon versions of The Beatles help the kindly citizens of Pepperland resist the authoritarian, fun-hating Blue Meanies. Based (very loosely) on a cheery, kid-friendly, sea shanty-like song that was originally released on the band’s 1966 album Revolver, the movie was the group’s third theatrical release, following the huge hits A Hard Day’s Night and Help! (The Beatles also starred in an hourlong 1967 TV special, Magical Mystery Tour.) Like those earlier films, Yellow Submarine is loaded with catchy music and absurdist humor, and it imagines band members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as fictional characters on a mission to make a drab world more entertaining.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Devil Doll, a 1964 British horror movie that Mike Nelson and his robot pals Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot mock mercilessly in a season 8 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which originally aired on October 4th, 1997). Bryant Haliday, best known for being one of the co-founders of the American arthouse movie distributor Janus Films, plays The Great Vorelli, a sinister ventriloquist and mesmerist with a huge following in London. William Sylvester, best known for playing Dr. Heywood Floyd in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is an American journalist who brings his girlfriend Marianne (Yvonne Romain) to one of Vorelli’s shows where she falls under his hypnotic spell. Sylvester scrambles to save Marianne’s soul, while also trying to figure out the secret of Vorelli’s disturbing animated dummy, Hugo.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Zombieland, a 2009 horror-comedy directed by Ruben Fleischer and written by Deadpool and Deadpool 2 screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Jesse Eisenberg stars as “Columbus,” one of the few survivors of a worldwide zombie apocalypse sparked by a virulent strain of mad cow disease. (In this world, the humans call themselves by the cities they’re most attached to, to avoid potentially disruptive emotional bonds.) Though Columbus prides himself on being a capable loner with a list of strict dos and don’ts, while out on the road, he bends his own rules as he joins forces with surly Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and con-artist sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). Together, the band heads west to an amusement park they’ve heard is a zombie-free zone.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Moon, a 2009 indie science fiction drama, was co-written by Nathan Parker with director Duncan Jones who both made their feature filmmaking debuts. Sam Rockwell stars as Sam Bell, a contract employee working for an energy company on an almost entirely automated lunar compound. As he nears the end of his three-year rotation, Sam has an accident, and during the process of recovery, he inadvertently discovers that nearly everything he’d been led to believe about his mission has been a lie. Fearing for his life, Sam spends his last days on the Moon executing a daring caper, with the help of his robotic assistant GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey).

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut (Mark 4), a 2013 Garrett Gilchrist recreation of Richard Williams’ unfinished feature film. Begun by Williams’ London-based studio in 1964, then seized by a financier and farmed out to another animation company for completion in 1992, The Thief and the Cobbler tells the story of an ancient Arabian city governed by a decadent king and a corrupt vizier. When a wily thief crosses paths with a kind-hearted cobbler named Tack, the encounter launches a chain of events that leads to Tack falling for the king’s daughter, and the city falling under siege by a tribe of one-eyed monsters. The fourth and most complete of Gilchrist’s “recobbled” cuts (which attempt to restore as much of Williams’ original vision as possible) uses footage from a much-bootlegged work print, combined with some original Gilchrist art, rare clips provided by animators who worked on the project, and pieces of the compromised 1993 theatrical version.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a film noir set in an alternate version of Golden Age Hollywood in which animated characters, or “Toons,” share the town with their human counterparts — sometimes with murderous consequences.