Sincerest apologies that this list, which usually comes a day or two before the upcoming month, is arriving two weeks late, but I’ve been very busy trying to force the guy I’ve been hooking up with to date me so that I can do something other than shrivel up and die on Valentine’s Day. No such luck, so here I am with the February edition of must-watch movies and shows on Netflix. You’re welcome.
Some months, I can’t wait for my flaky-ass friends to cancel our weekend plans so I can stay in and binge all of the newly added movies and shows I once loved and had since forgotten about, but other months, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a bunch of interns pick movie and show titles out of a hat and put them on Netflix. This month is the latter. Before you decide that nine different anime shows are not worth 13 of your dollars and cancel your subscription, know that there are plenty of classics and goodies coming to Netflix this month, so if you, too, have no plans on Valentine’s Day, this list is for you!
‘To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You’
The only time I ever felt like I have become my mother was when my editor suggested I add this movie to the list and I had no idea what she was talking about, so I gave it a Google to find out that it is the sequel to like, the biggest and best rom-com of 2018. Great. Already missing out on pop-culture references. So, if there are any others under the age of 54 who don’t know what this movie is, allow Netflix to explain. “When her secret love letters somehow get mailed to each of her five crushes, Lara Jean finds her quiet high school existence turned upside down.” Yikes! So apparently this is the sequel to that cinematic masterpiece, and it bears the same name plus “P.S. I Still Love You.” Sorry, but is the girl naming this movie the same person naming nail polishes? However, the cheese stands alone (I am the cheese) because everyone else seemed to love the first one, and will prob love the sequel. Lmk how it is, k?
‘The Stranger’: Season One
Based on the best-selling novel by Harlan Coben, this dark thriller will keep you guessing until the end. One day, a mysterious stranger shows up in Adam Price’s life out of nowhere, and she spills a secret that could have some major consequences for everyone involved. The book is one of the best thrillers to come out in the last few years, and the show has also gotten rave reviews. Maybe don’t watch this alone in the dark, because you will want to stay up all night to finish it, and then you won’t sleep for a month.
‘A Little Princess’
Before you skip this blurb because of the dumb movie name, wait! As a 26-year-old woman, I am proud to admit that A Little Princess is one of my favorite movies. I used to watch it with my grandfather every time I went to visit my grandparents and then I started to feel like eight viewings was seven viewings too many, so we stopped watching it. However, I saw it for the first time in like 13 years when it appeared on my Netflix homepage a few days ago, and let me just say, it’s still a great f*cking movie.
It’s about a little girl, Sara Crewe, who is quite possibly the most beautiful child in existence, but that isn’t important, I guess. Anyway, she and her dad (who are both American and f*cking loaded) are forced to leave their amazing life in India so that her dad can fight for his country in WWI and she can attend the world’s scariest boarding school. Anyway, her dad allegedly dies and she is left penniless, so bebe Sara becomes a servant at her boarding school. I’m already crying.
‘Love Is Blind’: Season One
Guys, this show sounds so stupid and I cannot wait to watch it. If you thought The Bachelor was unrealistic, just wait until you get a load of this sh*t. Netflix says, “Nick and Vanessa Lachey host this social experiment where single men and women look for love and get engaged, all before meeting in person.” Sooo it’s a Married At First Sight rip-off? There is so much to discuss in this very short sentence, so let’s start with the hosts. Is this Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s attempt to become relevant again? Based on this description alone, I assumed the psychos participants getting engaged before meeting were at least, like, skyping before tying the knot, but no, I assumed wrong! I watched the trailer to discover that the men and women are locked in what Nick and Vanessa are calling “pods” and talking to each other on telephones. Alrighty. I would never marry someone who calls me on the phone. Like, are your fingers broken? No? Then f*cking text me.
Just because all five of my friends were either out of town or had plans last Saturday night, I spent that time online stalking the cast to find that they are all local Atlantans and ~aspiring~ Instagram models. I kid you not, every male on the show has a fitness account on Instagram and every female concludes her captions with “use my name as the promo code for 20% off!” Here for the right reasons, though, right?? Lol.
‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age’
If I relate most to any member of the royal family, it’s OG Elizabeth. That bitch ruled a kingdom without assistance or permission from men. Slay, Queen. Anyway, there have been and will continue to be many biopics about our girl Liz, but this one is by far the best. It stars Cate Blanchett, who makes a serious case for elaborate collars and red hair. A lot happened during her lifetime and reign, but this movie’s main focus is how she handled the Spanish Armada and her complicated relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh. It’s a good watch if you’re in the mood to learn something.
‘Who Killed Malcom X?’
What a question. Three people were charged in the human rights activist’s murder, but no one really knows who actually did it. This docuseries explores what happened when an activist “embarks on a complex mission seeking truth in the name of justice,” says Netflix’s description. I’m definitely intrigued because I live for true crime documentaries and this is one of the country’s biggest mysteries. Sold.
‘Sex And The City 2’
This movie was so horrible, but I mean that in the best way possible. The clothes are as amazing as Samantha’s dried-up one-liners, and it’s worth your time if you haven’t seen it. To sum it up in one sentence: Carries wrote a few books, Samantha hasn’t changed, Charlotte is still a whiney hag, Miranda’s taste in clothes has improved, and they all go to Abu Dhabi. The end! It’s a good movie if you’re expecting it to be pure garbage, but it definitely didn’t get robbed at the 2010 Oscars, if ya know what I mean.
‘Narcos Mexico’: Season Two
I’m going to keep this short since I did not watch season one, but I did watch the original Narcos and it was great. This spin-off is probably even better because it explores the drug wars in Mexico during the 1980s. Also, Jason Bateman isn’t in this one, which I count as a plus. It’s a show about Felix Gallardo, who heads the fictional Guadalajara cartel, and DEA agent Kiki Camarena, who moves with her family to Guadalajara. Sounds cool; I’m officially interested.
‘The Pianist’
If you want an antidote to Sex and the City 2, definitely give The Pianist a watch. This is by far the saddest movie I’ve ever seen and it’s so factually accurate that we watched it in my AP European History class in high school. It’s about Wladyslaw Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody), a Jewish Polish radio station pianist, and his story of survival throughout the course of the Holocaust in Germany. It’s truly heartbreaking, but it’s done so well that you’d be remiss to skip it.
‘Jerry Maguire’
Believe it or not, there was once a time when Tom Cruise didn’t absolutely suck, and that time was in 1996 when Jerry Maguire came out. If you don’t know, this is a rom-com starring Tom and Bridget Jones. Long-story-short, Tom is a sports agent who gets himself fired by having a conscience. He teams up with a single mother and together, they start their own management firm, but not before they swiftly fall in love. Simpler times, amirite?
‘Dear John’
I am pretty sure Nicholas Sparks wrote all of his sappy male leads for Channing Tatum, and I’m 110% here for it. Not only did I read this book, but I saw the movie…in theaters. Obviously, it was terrible, but it did way better than I thought it would on Rotten Tomatoes, scoring a whopping 29%. Honestly, that’s pretty impressive. Just watch the trailer and you’ve basically already seen the movie, minus a subpar sex scene that takes place in what looks like a barn. K. It’s Channing Tatum at his hottest, so this is another good reason to cancel your plans.
Images: Bettina Strauss / Netflix; Movie Coverage, Movieclips Classic Trailers (2), Netflix (2), Movieclips, End Time News, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Movies & Shows, Sony Pictures Entertainment / Youtube
After months of waiting, the newest member of the Royal family is finally here. Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, gave birth to a baby boy early this morning, May 6th. While we were all commuting to work this morning, reports spread that Meghan Markle was in labor, but luckily we didn’t have to wait very long. At around 9:30am, they announced the baby’s arrival with a post on the official Sussex Royal Instagram account, and added that the little prince weighs 7 lbs, 3 oz. Actually, they specifically said that “Their Royal Highnesses’ son weighs 7lbs. 3oz.” Nice and pretentious, just the way I like it.
Unlike Will and Kate’s first baby, Meghan Markle Jr. (what I’m going to call the baby until we find out the name) will probably never be King, but he’s still in the line of succession. He’s seventh in line to the throne, which is significant because there could technically be a black King of England. Amazing. A lot of sh*t would have to go down in order for this to happen, but still, Meghan Markle has really changed the future of the Royal family.
Reports had long suggested that Meghan Markle Jr. would arrive at the very end of April or early May, and things looked even more sure when Prince Harry’s scheduled visit to the Netherlands this week was shortened to a single-day engagement. He will be in The Hague on May 9th to kick off the one-year countdown to the 2020 Invictus Games, a sporting event which is one of his main projects.
The arrival of Meghan Markle Jr. is probably a huge relief for everyone in the royal family, because the past few weeks have been a nightmare, with rumors that Prince William cheated on Kate Middleton. According to sources, these cheating issues are at the root of the reported disputes between Will and Harry, who used to be super close. Hopefully, this new baby will help the family mend some of their issues, or else Queen Elizabeth might have to put Will and Harry in timeout until they can play nice with each other.
Images: Shutterstock; @sussexroyal / Instagram
It’s been almost four months since the royal wedding, and I’ll be honest, I miss it. From approximately February through May, a solid 50% of my mental energy was devoted to Meghan Markle, and I was loving every scrap of news about her and her crazy family. Well, Meghan has settled nicely into her new life as the Duchess of Sussex, but her American family is no less batsh*t. In case you haven’t been keeping up with the Markles (E! Network, please get on this), here’s your much-needed update on what Samantha and Thomas have been up to lately.
The first bit of major drama involves Meghan’s time on Suits. I’m still obsessed with the fact the the former star of a USA show is literally a princess, so sign me up. Recently, Wendell Pierce, who played Meghan’s dad on the show, publicly slammed Meghan’s real dad, Thomas Markle, for the negative things he’s said about Meghan. Basically, Thomas is a messy b*tch who lives for drama, even if it means throwing his daughter under the bus. Wendell, who actually seems like he would be a good dad, told The Daily Telegraph “If you love your daughter, just love your daughter. It’s not for public consumption.” Shots fired.
Lucky for us, the Markle family is way too desperate to just let something like this go. Samantha, Meghan’s half sister, hit back at Wendell Pierce on Twitter, saying that his advice is “like a television president telling the White House what to do.” Ooh, sick burn. In the past, this might have been a solid analogy, but at this point I would really kill for Robin Wright or Julia Louis-Dreyfus to get in there and take control. Claire Underwood is the only one who can save us now.
I’m also a big fan of the random quotation marks around “stop sucking” in the second tweet. Not only is Samantha Markle a crappy sister, but she apparently is not so hot at English grammar. I’m not even going to pretend to be surprised.
And, because one questionable White House metaphor is never enough, Samantha had to try another one. In some more unhinged tweets, Sammy Markle fully compared Meghan to Donald Trump:
“Trump said he ‘could shoot someone and still get votes’…The ‘ant line mentality’ is the same here. Stop being gullible. Smiles and waves are a smokescreen.”
What??? Everyone is entitled to their own opinions about Meghan Markle and whether she’s a nice girl or whatever, but this really seems like a stretch. Like, she’s a princess who just goes to charity events and looks pretty in tasteful dresses, not a political leader with worse judgment than drunk me at 3AM. I won’t pretend to know what goes down between Meghan and her family behind closed doors, but Samantha’s tweets are desperate AF.
The one good thing in all of this is that, apparently, Queen Elizabeth has been super supportive of Meghan during the drama with her family. Understandably, Meghan is stressed about the situation, and at this point it’s unclear if it’s even worth reaching out to her dad. But an “Us Weekly Buckingham Palace source” (seriously, who are these people??) said “what may surprise some is just how supportive Her Majesty has been during the problems Meghan has faced with her family. Meghan is in a tough place, and the queen knows it’s completely out of Meghan’s hands. She has only sympathy for what’s been a difficult and distressing situation for her.” Wow, this seems like major growth, considering that a few hundred years ago, they probably would’ve just beheaded Meghan and started over.
The source says that Meghan is worried that if she did reach out to her father, he would just record their conversation and sell it to the press. This is obviously very cynical, but she’s not wrong. Thomas Markle has proven time and time again to be completely shameless when it comes to exploiting his daughter for fame, so he would definitely have TMZ listening on the phone in the next room.
My personal favorite piece in all of this drama is Samantha Markle’s reality TV debut that never actually happened. Way back in July, it was reported that she would be a contestant on the new season of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK. The new season was allegedly going to feature lots of stars that had been embroiled in controversy, and Sammy Markle seemed like a big get. My all-time fave Stormy Daniels was also set to appear. I was actually pretty excited to see them on the show, but then…they weren’t on it.
Two days after the season premiered, Samantha took to Twitter to clear things up (sort of):
Again, grammar is not her strong suit. I do really love that someone called her out, considering that she had been tweeting about being on TV for the previous weeks. I’m really just dying to know what this “I other opportunity” is, because I still haven’t gotten sick of Samantha Markle content. Luckily, she’s apparently working on a memoir, with the working title The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister. This sounds like a children’s book that teaches you how to share, and I can’t f*cking wait to preorder it. God bless this mess of a family.
Images: @SammyMarkle64 / Twitter (2); Giphy
The royal wedding is less than three months away, and details are starting to fall into place about the special day. Earlier, we got a closer look at the itinerary for the special day, but today we got even better info: The Spice Girls are performing at the royal wedding.
Start crimping your hair and put on your shortest minidress, because this is a full-fledged pop culture emergency. We got early confirmation of the exciting news on Wednesday, when Mel B appeared on The Real (it’s a knockoff of The View) and spilled the beans. The ladies on the show first asked if Mel knew anyone going to the wedding, to which her response was basically like “bitch please I’M going to the wedding.” She revealed that all five Spice Girls got invitations, and the ladies put two and two together that this meant a performance was likely. Mel B acknowledged that this was correct, before adding that she would probably get fired for sharing the top-secret information.
With the wedding happening on May 19, this performance should serve as a good warmup before their alleged world tour this summer. Victoria Beckham says the tour isn’t happening, but I really need her to be wrong.
So now let’s discuss what this already iconic wedding performance will look like. As we reported previously, the wedding day will consist of a traditional ceremony, followed by a large reception, and then a private family party later in the evening. So there are lots of possibilities for what Posh, Scary, Sporty, Baby, and Ginger could be cooking up.
Honestly, there’s no reason that the Spice Girls, patron saints of girl groups everywhere, shouldn’t perform at the ceremony. They could wear sequined angel costumes (complete with wings, obvi), and sing pop arrangements of classic Anglican hymns. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house, and it would have nothing to do with Meghan Markle looking stunning.
More realistically, the Spice Girls will probably perform at the bigger reception. We’re hoping it’s a super legit setup with lasers, fog, and wind machines, and that they perform for a minimum of 45 minutes. Think Super Bowl halftime show, but with a bigger budget and more time. The world deserves this, so there will obviously be an HD livestream for all of us to enjoy. There is nothing about this that seems unreasonable to me.
That just leaves the smaller, private family event, and the Spice Girls would be a great choice for that as well. I’m thinking a chill acoustic setup, with just five stools and a guitarist, so that the artistry of each individual Spice Girl can really shine through. They’ll perform an hour-long set of some of their lesser-known hits, as well as covers of Adele songs. Hopefully the space will be really small, so Queen Elizabeth will be seated less than 10 feet from these five other British Queens. I also require that Ginger Spice wears her bedazzled Union Jack minidress, because patriotism.
So, that’s what the real itinerary should look like for the royal wedding Spice Girls reunion weekend extravaganza. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle can direct any questions to me, because I am now in charge of planning this whole thing. But really, the Spice Girls are performing, and we couldn’t be happier about it.
Images: Columbia Pictures; Giphy (3)
Heads up, you need to keep up with the news. It’s not cute anymore. That’s why we’ve created a 5x weekly newsletter called The ‘Sup that will explain all the news of the week in a hilarious af way. Because if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. Sign up for The ‘Sup now!
There are many important parts of any successful wedding: the perfect dress, the perfect venue, comfortable shoes, and high stress levels that will give you multiple mental breakdowns before the day is over. Any wedding is stressful but our new look into the royal wedding itinerary is making me rethink my desire to be the next Meghan Markle, because yikes.
This isn’t like a regular wedding, it’s a cool wedding. The ceremony will be at noon at St. George’s Chapel, which is literally the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen, and I think I want to be buried there. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who’s basically like the British version of the Pope, is officiating the ceremony, so like no pressure. At 1pm there’s a carriage procession back to the castle (naturally), where there will be a larger reception followed by an intimate party for close family and friends. Two wedding receptions is such a relatable choice, I’m def adding that to my Pinterest board.
The wedding service will begin at 12noon at St George's Chapel. The Dean of Windsor will conduct the service and The Archbishop of Canterbury will officiate as the couple make their vows. pic.twitter.com/dTS56fy22c
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) February 12, 2018
We’re still patiently waiting on our invite, which is probably just lost in the mail? Ha ha, right guys?? We’re really curious if any of Meghan’s actor friends/trash people managed to get invites, and if so they’ll probably be seated at the absolute shittiest table in the corner. I really need footage of the entire cast of Suits arguing over who has to go over and say hello to the Queen, because that will be a shitshow.
We only have approximately three months left before this wedding, so I’m really sorry but it will be all I’m talking about from now on. Please feel free to approach me with conspiracy theories about who’s designing the dress, or how they’ll honor Diana during the ceremony, but I really don’t want to hear about anything else.
Heads up, you need to keep up with the news. It’s not cute anymore. That’s why we’ve created a 5x weekly newsletter called The ‘Sup that will explain all the news of the week in a hilarious af way. Because if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. Sign up for The ‘Sup now!