Splishin’ and A-Splashin’
The Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones of newsletters lays at your feet the Spread Guide to Summer Watchin’.
Welcome to Spreadlandia, where two veteran editors read it ALL to winnow out only the best: juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal essays, and hot goss—aka, the full Spread. Plus: original interviews, podcasts, and more. Come hungry!
Spreadkittens,
Because we are us, we have been known to lay awake in bed, asking life’s big questions: Would we be friends with Olivia Wilde? Is Penelope Cruz the most beautiful woman on God’s green Earth? Should we add Edward Norton to our hall pass shortlist? (And should we call him Ed?) Is Seth Rogen actually significantly shorter than his IMDb-listed five feet eleven inches? Last night, we got answers to all of these pressing queries and many more from a screening of The Invite. And—not actually a spoiler—every last one of them was a big ole YES. Because its trailer is perfect (a word we use sparingly; off the top of our heads, only the Jarhead, The Social Network, and Like Crazy previews clear the bar), we’d been managing our expectations for the film, a chamber piece starring Wilde, Rogen, Cruz, and Norton, and directed by Wilde, in which an elder-millennial couple in San Francisco (Wilde and Rogen) invite their sexy upstairs neighbors (Cruz and Norton). Y’all: Hilarity really does ensue. While the movie is far from flawless (especially in the last 20 percent IOHO), it’s an excellent send-up of our own milieu. See: The scene involving Rogen searching for a corkscrew in drawers Wilde would literally never have put one in. We guffawed till we cried. Not that that’s a comment on our own marriages or anything! Anywho! The movie opens in select theaters Friday, with a wider release on July 10, and we hope you’ll see it sooner than later so we can all go together to buy Cruzian platinum wigs before summer’s end.
We’re dedicating this issue to ways to spend the other 2,230 hours of your summer, and don’t worry, we’re staying in our lane: You won’t find a single hike or road trip game on this list—just the basic sustenance of 26 new movies and shows. To be clear, we’re not guaranteeing these are future Spreadie Award Winners™, we’re just saying they are summer entertainments, and not the worst way to wile away a few hours of AC, maybe with a frozen watermelon mojito or three?
We’re taking next week off but we’ll see ya back here, same time, same place, the week after July 4th!
Cannonball!
Rachel & Maggie
🔑 KEY 🔑
⚡: Out now
🍿: In theaters
🎥: Movie
📺: TV (Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, HBO, Peacock, etc.)
Watch it with a fellow Spreader (or a Spreaditor—hey, we’re free!). Aka movies about women on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
