Author: Kasey Butcher

God bless Lin-Manuel Miranda for bringing a Broadway musical to our homes (or movie theaters) two summers in a row. If you are a fan of Hamilton, In the Heights is a must-watch, full of Miranda’s wordplay and heartfelt storytelling. ... Read more

Netflix’s The Woman in the Window, based on the novel by A.J. Finn, is not a good movie. I am not going to argue otherwise. I would argue, however, that despite commentary that suggests otherwise, the movie’s homage to Rear Window is not its primary ... Read more

Netflix has been releasing some great family content lately. Not long ago, we enjoyed Yes Day, during which my husband waxed poetic about how much he loves saying “no.” In contrast, The Mitchells vs the Machines had him growing very sentimental ... Read more

Melissa McCarthy and her writer-director-husband, Ben Falcone have basically created an assembly line for movies featuring her as brassy underdogs. Last year’s Superinteligence, which debuted on HBO Max, gave McCarthy a softer, less ... Read more

“‘No’ is my favorite word. I get an endorphin rush just saying it,” my husband joked as we sat down to watch Yes Day on Netflix. Our daughter has not yet hit the toddler phase, so no one is saying “no” that much in our house, but this new family movie ... Read more

When a show is declared “the new Gilmore Girls,” I take notice. Although I found that Ginny & Georgia’s similarities peaked with the single teen mom backstory, I think the Netflix show is smart, clever, and incredibly dramatic in a fun way. ... Read more

When I started watching The Little Things, so much of its style looked very familiar. There are a lot of great neonoir elements including a green tinge to the lighting and the use of shadows, windows, and even an awesome shot from outside a diner. ... Read more

I waited, mostly patiently, for years for the second Wonder Woman movie to be released. It got pushed back repeatedly due to COVID-19 and finally was released on Christmas simultaneously through HBO Max and in theaters. The triumphant previews ... Read more

Netflix’s newest romantic comedy, Love, Guaranteed, leans heavily on conventions of the genre, but is so fun that I forgive its clichés. In the movie, Rachel Leigh Cook plays Susan, a lawyer with a heart of gold who takes the case of Nick (Damon ... Read more

‘Tis the season for corny, cliched holiday movies, and I could not be more ready for it. This year, both Netflix and Hulu are offering plenty of options, some more delightful than others. ... Read more

I am a Wingnut. That is to say, a big fan of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin’s drama about quixotic civil servants in a White House so earnest it makes my heart hurt a little. Naturally, I was excited to watch The Trial of the Chicago 7, a new drama written ... Read more

Gothic novels and adaptations of them are making a comeback this year—a trend that I wholeheartedly embrace. With the genre’s gloomy settings, antiheroes, and suspenseful plots, you would think it would be hard to go wrong, but Netflix’s ... Read more

At the beginning of the year, in the Before Times when movies were still coming out in theaters, I reviewed The Turning, a decent adaptation of one of my favorite books, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. The new followup to last fall’s The Haunting ... Read more

Available on Amazon Prime, Radioactive tells the story of the innovative careers and passionate love story of Marie (Rosamund Pike) and Pierre Curie (Sam Riley). From the time they meet as Marie is struggling to find her place in the scientific ... Read more

Love in the Time of Corona, riffing off the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel Love in the Time of Cholera, is too perfect a title to not have been swooped up eventually. I was surprised to see Freeform nab it first. The increasingly saucy family-friendly ... Read more

I really miss going to the movie theater and I hope that soon the studios will be back with major releases—like Wonder Woman 1984—and we can go safely to see them. In the meantime, I have found it helpful that with streaming, if I watch a terrible ... Read more

One of the few good surprises of the year has been the announcement that Disney+ was releasing the film version of Hamilton in July of this year, instead of October 2021, as was planned. For the minimal cost of one month of the streaming service, ... Read more

I thought I was really scraping the bottom of the Netflix barrel when I agreed to watch Floor is Lava with my husband, but it turned out that the new game show, based on that game we played with our siblings when we were kids, is a lot of good, silly ... Read more