And suddenly, we're here.

Beef (Season 1) – 3/5

Can I sum up A24 as people who gave an increasing sense of importance to cinematography and design? Beef looks good. Beef looks great, actually. Looking great makes things seem great. It's easier to like things when they look good. It's harder to like ugly things. 'Looks great' creates the illusion of taste. "Oh, the cinematography is beautiful" is not a reason that something is great, but it is a protection, a ward cast. It's hard to dismiss it easily. The premise here is interesting and, at the very end, it starts to answer that promise of interesting – how our private battles become public, but in becoming public, we have the potential to see ourselves in each other. The end makes me excited for where it might go next (if a next is even promised). But getting there was a lot of down, down, down, and I only want to follow someone so far before I need to see them come up. It's torture-as-comedy, and I can only handle that in a two-hour movie. Five hours is pushing it, boss.