Things I Enjoyed Last Week: April 20-26

Now, more than ever, we need to get caught up with perfectly fine straight-to-streaming action movies [Netflix]

I'm gonna give some more thoughts on the Lions' drafting later today hopefully, but in the meantime, I enjoyed things!

Movie Thing I Enjoyed: 6 Underground: Last night I watched Michael Bay's straight-to-Netflix action movie from last year 6 Underground. I really enjoyed it. "Michael Bay is a secret auteur" is a film talking point that's been insufferably debated in the past few decades, so I'm not going to bang those talking points much. I'm just going to say that when he really hits on an action setpiece, it really hits. That's what matters. I didn't exactly love the movie, mostly because I'm increasingly tired of every time Ryan Reynolds appears on my screen in any role. I wish the main character was played by anybody other than him. But it's not a Michael Bay movie if there's not one aspect of it that is completely grating, and Reynolds is a perfect vehicle for "Michael Bay movie humor." I had fun and enjoyed large action setpieces despite any problems I had with the movie, and that's what I'm looking for when I watch straight-to-streaming action movies.

Internet Thing I Enjoyed: Giant Bomb Dot Com: I've been a Premium subscriber to Giant Bomb for a few years now. They're one of the few video game content sites I can really get into at this point. They've been in "lockdown" mode for over a month, so instead of recording and streaming from their San Francisco/New York studios they're streaming from home. It's incredibly hard to keep up with even with increased free time, because the home streaming has actually led to a massive uptick in content. Instead of maybe three hours of content a day, it's eight hours. I've had to be a lot more selective with what I watch, but I've enjoyed it. The weekly recordings of the Giant Bombcast and Giant Beastcast have been as good as ever. Jeff Gerstmann's home streams were a treat before things got shut down, and now there are even more of them. Alex Navarro's Rock Band and American Truck Simulator streams are perfect chill background content. Abby Russell's Friday night charity streams have been really fun. There's a lot more cross-coast streaming because everybody is working remote anyway, which leads to more of staff pairings the site only sees during E3 or during its Game of the Year deliberations. As a fan of the site, I'm excited for them to get back to doing the more traditional studio shows that I love, but they've been killing it when it comes to content, all things considered.

Beer Thing I Enjoyed: Elysian Space Dust: My corner store has had a sale on Space Dust the past month, which means I'm getting an 8.2% ABV beer for only a few dollars. It's not my favorite IPA but it's unbeatable for the price. That rules, except on the nights that I realize I've already had two of them on a relatively empty stomach.

Wrestling Thing I Enjoyed: IndependentWrestlingTV: My wrestling watching has decreased since most promotions I watch have been shut down, but IWTV  has been doing a great job of streaming/uploading older shows every day of quarantine. Not everything is my kind of stuff, but there's a huge variety. If you're into wrestling and want to get more into independent stuff or see where your favorite wrestlers were working before they went to WWE/AEW, it's a really good resource. They hand out multiple-week trials pretty regularly, too.

TV Thing I Think I Might Enjoy Maybe?: Westworld: I kinda gave up on Westworld after a few episodes the last time I tried watching it, largely in part because my HBO free trial expired. But my roommates are starting from the beginning, so I'm watching along. I'm not super into some of HBO's more "epic" shows (I gave up on Game of Thrones sometime in season 4, only watched two episodes of Watchmen), but there are enough solid performances and good production design that I think it'll be worth keeping up with, even though I'm not in love with some of the writing.