Nina Metz

@ninametz

TV and film critic for the Chicago Tribune Newsletter: Nina Watches Everything

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Nina Metz@ninametz· 25d

I see variations of this every so often, of people not following thru on plans or social occasions, and it seems like there’s an uptick since Covid … but I’m struck by the fact that this doesn’t seem to be reflected in TV/film Are there examples I’m just not thinking of?

tried to have a housewarming a couple of months ago and everyone said they'd come and no one came. i was so nervous and i never invite anyone to anything. i made lil sushi rolls and bought drinks. no one cancelled. no one even apologised, just ghosted. cant stop crashing out now

Nina Metz@ninametz· 26d

Love these two

A poster for “Gentleman Prefer Blondes” starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe standing back to back in matching outfits: open toe black heels, black fishnet stockings, and a black sequined strapless leotard tops with a gold lamé ruffle at the bosom

Nina Metz@ninametz· 26d

(whispers): yes

I can't really take seriously anyone who treats the Criterion Collection as anything other than a pretty good boutique home video company, which is what it has always been

Nina Metz@ninametz· 26d

“Engagement is important to our business. But as discussed above, engagement is not just the quantity of view hours, but also refers to the quality and variety of our offering. To make this clearer, we’re making a change to our view hours disclosure.” Obvious spin is obvious Also 👇

Notably missing from the latest "What We Watched" report was specific viewership data for Netflix's growing lineup of video podcasts, which were instead lumped together under "Other Shows" at the bottom of the report. Netflix said it did not break out video podcast viewership metrics because the format is still new to
the platform - first launching earlier this year — but that the company saw encouraging internal data that shows engagement is primarily through daytime viewing and mobile. In the first half of 2026, Netflix members streamed 757 million hours of "Other Shows."

Nina Metz@ninametz· 26d

This number from “The Music Man” makes me wonder if we’d find it weird if a song about package deliveries showed up in a modern musical It would probably have to be about porch pirates or “why is marked delivered but not actually here??” or “your driver never even rang my bell”

Nina Metz@ninametz· 28d

But then, there's little in The Odyssey that breathes. It churns so dutifully toward its predictable conclusions—summed up roughly as "War dehumanizes men!" and "Civilization, now as in Odysseus' time, is on the brink!"-that you begin to wonder if it wouldn't be a better use of your time to just stay home and read The Odyssey. We want and need more movie artistry-and more dedication to the craft, which Nolan, no matter what you think of him, surely espouses. But a movie still needs to add up to something you actually want to watch, not just a testament to a filmmaker's solemn dedication to the hallowed tradition of filmmaking. We've reached a point where we get so few extravagant, ambitious studio movies that we're expected to collapse with gratitude whenever we're presented with one. That's not opening ourselves to what movies can be, it's succumbing to a kind of hostage taking.

Nina Metz@ninametz· 28d

I think I gotta agree, McShane is just tremendous in “Deadwood”

Twitter screenshot:

Just finished my third rewatch of Deadwood (including the movie). As fantastically written and acted as the entire ensemble is, the overwhelming feeling I'm left with is that lan McShane as Al Swearengen gives the single greatest male television performance of all fucking time.

Nina Metz@ninametz· 28d

My exposure to sports is mostly thru pop culture rather than avidly following a team/season/games so I ask: Is Chicago a booin’ town too?

In some places, booing might be the pinnacle of fan hostility, but in Philadelphia, it's just business.
Like Abrams said: It's the fans' way of participating in the competition. Just like you cheer to express excitement, you boo to express displeasure. The players are meant to hear it, and respond to it, but it's not personal. There are definitely things fans can - and, unfortunately, do - say to players that cross the line into the hurtful and personal. Which is why the boo, with its round, blunt edges, is so useful.

Nina Metz@ninametz· 29d

Elsbeth Tascioni on “The Good Wife” S1E22 She’s a little quirky, sure but … not childlike the way she is on “Elsbeth.” On “The Good Wife” she’s a defense attorney so she’s skeptical of law enforcement/prosecutors, not working in concert with them. I hate what they did to her character on “Elsbeth”!

Nina Metz@ninametz· 29d

Who can afford to pursue a life in the arts when the financial prospects of show biz can be so iffy? Children of the rich

Cruz is the 21-year-old son of Spice Girl alumna Victoria Beckham and international
football icon David Beckham. Their collective celebrity lends Cruz's career a momentum (such as it is that his tepid, forgettable music cannot. His debut EP, Wear & Tear, comes out around three weeks after Lolla. By my count, Beckham is one of three nepo babies playing the festival.
Model Gene Gallagher, son of Oasis front man Liam, leads limp grunge group Villanelle, and Stella Lefty, daughter of Groupon cofounder Eric Lefkofsky, is riding high on treacly country-pop hit "Boston." At least you can also count Stella Lefty among the small pool of local acts at Lolla, though she grew up in Glencoe and lives in Los Angeles.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 12

But no matter how many hours of tennis coverage they binge, BBC television audiences at home-many of whom watch tennis only during this fortnight-aren't likely to hear the whole story about Zverev.
That is, unless something dramatically changes in the network's policy and practices toward a crucial aspect of Zverev's biography, one that has stained his image among many tennis fans who follow the sport year-round.
First in 2020, and then again in 2023, Zverev was accused of physical and emotional abuse by two of his long-term former partners, Olya Sharypova and Brenda Patea. Zverev has offered repeated blanket denials to the detailed claims made by each woman.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 9

omg 😭🫡 With alt txt

The post reads:

Writer: "Is it 'firsthand' or 'first hand'?"

Editor: "Either one is fine."

Screenshot of a newspaper headline:

Mentoring Day: Students get first hand job experience

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 7

This is an unusual but not unprecedented choice for host; Angela Lansbury hosted the Emmys in 1993. Usually though it’s a comedian/someone with talk show experience I actually think this is fascinating because she’s basically the human avatar of network (old school) TV

MARISKA HARGITAY TO HOST 78TH EMMY AWARDS ON NBC

Telecast to Honor TV's
Best Airs Live on Monday, Sept. 14 on
NBC and Peacock

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 6

Shaw doesn’t post on here unfortunately but this data point feels incomplete — there’s a big difference between losing 30% of your audience and 70%! Not sure if the explanation is “simple” but I think it’s probably straightforward: -short seasons -long turnarounds -unpredictable return skeds +

Screenshot chart from twitter listing the following shows: “The Night Agent,” “One Piece,” “Four Seasons,” “Running Point” and “Beef”

Here are five Netflix hits that lost a lot of their audience between seasons 1 and 2.

Some had long breaks. Some came back right away.

There is no simple explanation.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 6

Haven’t seen this show but as a general observation YES

In recent years, though, there's been a proliferation of shows that, possibly obeying some algorithm, care less for coherence than sensation. They lurch among tones, from cuteness to sentimentality to meanness, stirring in random plot twists along the way. Bouncing all over the emotional map, these shows depend on compelling actors and a few memorable scenes to make us overlook their loose construction.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 6

Police are frequently asked to do security on TV/film sets, either in their official capacity or moonlighting. This references Apple’s “Bad Monkey”

The cop, Lamar Roman, wasn't trying to pull over a suspected criminal. He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey, which he had worked a security detail shift on a few weeks prior to pulling her over. After meeting the woman, catcalling her and harassing her for her full name and Instagram details, the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID, a Florida Department of Motor Vehicles database for law enforcement. He then put her license plate details on a surveillance "hotlist," meaning he would get a notification in real time anytime she drove by an Al-powered license plate surveillance camera.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 5

“for anyone trying to earn a living by writing, the world that tech has been allowed to build is a terrible one”

Organizing, editing, and brainstorming are part of writing-while-human. They can be hard, even scary, but that doesn't mean they could or should be done by machines. If you need a burst of inspiration or a jolt to throw you out of a rut, ask a question out loud, pick a word at random in a physical dictionary, and use that as a prompt to magick up an answer. Or ask a person.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 3

Corporate origin stories absolutely dominated our screens in '23 with “Air” (Nike’s line of basketball shoes), “Tetris” (the eponymous video game), “BlackBerry” (the smartphone brand) “Flamin’ Hot” (about processed snack food) and “The Beanie Bubble” (Beanie Babies) buttondown.com/NinaWatchesE...

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 2

I have little respect for the author but this detail is ⚠️⚠️⚠️ www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm...

The decline has been especially severe at the local level. Over the last two decades, more than 80% of local journalism jobs have vanished. Nearly 3,500 newspapers have shuttered, with another closing every three days. Digital news organizations have filled only a tiny part of that void.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 1

I can’t afford to go anywhere or do anything so it’s been a while since I’ve stayed at a hotel … and for some reason this question popped in my head, so I asked a friend who travels a lot. I know everything is in a diminished state but damn!

Screenshot of text exchange

Me: Do hotels still do turndown service? And if so, do they still leave a piece of chocolate on your pillow?

Friend: Not in the US, at least not in my experience

Nina they bring room service in take out containers with plastic utensils in the US now

If they even have it

Me: This is depressing

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 1

If actors aren’t willing to age, then we aren’t going to see what people in their 60s, 70s and 80s actually look like, on screen. That’s a huge disservice to audiences buttondown.com/NinaWatchesE...

When audiences are fed images where an actor's facial expression does not match the character's actual sentiment, will we gradually lose the ability to read facial cues out in the real world?

On Twitter, someone made this observation:

My woke take is that more films need actors who are uglier, older, and fatter and I'm not joking.

Someone replied:

We watched "Alien" when they put it back into theaters a few years ago and I was taken aback by how normal the crew looks and how much it helps with overall immersion.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jul 1

Olivia Wilde is talking here about the scourge of actors getting Botox and then not being able to convey facial expressions … and it feels so sad that her hope is for a treatment that doesn’t freeze people’s faces, rather than a society (industry) that doesn’t disparage physical signs of aging

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 30

I can't read the NYT review but this brief excerpt suggests a pan lol!

From Google results: New York Times review published Aug. 21, 1981 — Not even the extras do anything right in "First Monday in October,"
a movie in which a young man can't deliver the line, "Excuse me, Mr. Chief ..." (it cuts off there with a hyperlink to "read more")

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 30

People loved “Succession” because asks us to laugh at the obscenely rich and their avaricious games. But it also quietly argues that this is all we can hope to do when the wealthy and coldblooded have a stranglehold on power. I'd argue that's a defeatist mindset! An award-winning one at that lol!

That’s because the media we consume isn’t just entertainment. It seeps into our subconscious and shapes the way we think about the world — and the way we think about what’s possible. In the face of seemingly insurmountable problems, what inspires and motivates people to brainstorm counter-strategies? What kind of support do people need to turn those ideas into action? What does that look like in practice? How do you build momentum and how does that become widespread?

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 30

"Abbott Elementary" and "The Bear" feel like outliers to me because they are fundamentally stories of people — varying in age and race, some of whom don’t even like each other — coming together against adversity. The shows are meant to ENTERTAIN but they are also saying something about that PROCESS

I wonder if the stories Hollywood has been telling us these past few years foster a defeatist sentiment, as well. There’s a preponderance of copaganda and superheroes saving the day and a category of narrative best described as wealth-aganda — stories focused on the interior lives of the rich, from the aspirational to the ridiculous to the unscrupulous.

Rarer, though, are stories of regular people working together to solve problems and balance the scales.

Captains of industry tend to get jumpy about ideas like collective action. These elite, ultra high net worth fiefdoms have no interest in being challenged. If you think that doesn’t apply to Hollywood executives, you’re not paying attention. Perhaps they see more upside in churning out TV and film that reinforces the idea that, amid all this anxiety, the best we can hope for is some escapism on screen where, if there’s any saving to be done, that’s best left to cops or superheroes.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 29

The business tycoon-as-protagonist — maker of jobs and lots of money — who better to be at the center of the narrative? I mean, I can think of plenty of others, actually Rarely do these corporate origin stories make good films. **Complicated** films www.chicagotribune.com/2023/07/27/t...

Do studio executives have an aversion to narratives about the frequently underpaid and under-appreciated collective workforce that makes all these corporate endeavors possible? If you think this lineup of films is mere coincidence, I have a sneaker/video game/smartphone/snack food/stuffed animal to sell you. Or rather,
Hollywood does.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 28

“Hello, Larry” really had a banger of a theme song

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 27

With alt txt “seasons three and four, which are basically the same season” I’d include Season 5 in that as well 🤷🏻‍♀️

In that way, The Bear is one of the bullshittiest shows on TV. Beyond all the technical kitchen stuff, which I have to assume is accurate enough, none of it rings true to me. On the squishier side, the human side, everything seems so false and effortful, so pleased with itself. Early on in the show's run, creator Christopher Storer became so enamored of his rambling slice-of-life tone that he kind of stopped coming up with actual plots, seeming to figure that a lot of overlapping dialogue and some nice lighting and camera technique-along with a few digressive, enervating, awards-hustling family episodes in which a bunch of famous people like Jamie Lee Curtis do garish guest work-was enough to make The Bear great art.
The Bear's hokum became more glaring in seasons three and four, which are basically the same season. There's no real narrative difference between the two, and essentially nothing happens in either. But there is a lot of maudlin music, and plenty of closeups on faces expressing inscrutable emotions that we are somehow supposed to understand as really deep and meaningful. It's mortifying television.

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 26

When saving journalism pays better than doing journalism www.amphibian.media/when-saving-...

A forensic look at the nonprofit journalism economy, where public-interest newsrooms are increasingly funded by philanthropy, managed by professional executive teams and shaped by the same salary questions they often investigate elsewhere

Nina Metz@ninametz· Jun 26

Carmy is ostensibly “The Bear’s” main character, but somehow it became the Cousin Richie show. I’m won over by his efforts to become someone with talent and a purpose, but story-wise Sydney and others have gotten short shrift www.chicagotribune.com/2026/06/26/b...