I cannot stop thinking about “Sterling Point,” my newest Prime Video TV show obsession.
As a Senior Talent Booker and Producer at BuzzFeed, you can typically catch me flailing about the buzziest TV shows and movies.
This is easily one of my favorite new shows of the year. As someone who has loved Megan Park’s previous two projects, The Fallout and My Old Ass, I knew she would crush it again. No surprise, I was 100% correct. Sterling Point follows 17-year-old Annie (Ella Rubin), who is a pretty typical teenager. Raised in NYC with her twin brother (Keen Ruffalo) and adoptive father (Jay Duplass), Annie's life is suddenly turned upside down when she inherits her mysterious grandfather's island in Canada. Now, she finds new friends and budding romances, all while family secrets, like a sister (Amélie Hoeferle) she never knew she had, surface and change everything.
Rubin is such a star. Seriously, I’ve loved her in everything she’s done (her casting as Anne Hathaway’s daughter in The Idea of You was exceptional), and she does it again in this show, backed by a stellar cast of fresh, new, young actors. Park’s writing and directing style lend themselves to the teen TV genre so well that the whole world feels lived in, and the characters are so lively and authentic. Sterling Point feels like the teen TV shows I grew up on, like The O.C., One Tree Hill, and Dawson’s Creek, which is the highest compliment I can pay this show. Park’s training ground in teen TV goes back to her starring in The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and so it’s no surprise she knows exactly how to excel in this genre (for a modern audience, no less).
Streaming on Apple TV; episodes drop on Wednesdays
After a bit of a hiatus, Ted Lasso is officially back with a new season. In Season 4, Ted (Jason Sudeikis) returns to Richmond, where he's now put in charge of coaching a second division women's football team. Can he work his Ted magic again and turn this struggling women’s football club into a winner like he did with the men’s team? Alongside Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, and Jeremy Swift reprise their roles from the first three seasons, alongside a new cast of characters.
I still think the first two seasons of Ted Lasso are perfect seasons of TV, but the show has lost a bit of its spark as the seasons have gone on. The first episode of this season drops you right into what Ted has been up to for the past few years, and while the catch-up is important, it causes the season to start a little slow. However, once the football coaching gets kicked into gear, and Sudeikis, Waddingham, Temple, Goldstein, and more slip effortlessly back into their roles, it’s a fun season of TV for fans.
Nimrods is a coming-of-age comedy that follows a group of teenagers who have dreams of becoming a great band. They also happen to love Green Day. So, when they get a chance to slip their demo to the band, it suddenly leads them on a cross-country road trip to LA after they are invited to open for Green Day on New Year's Eve. What ensues is a hilarious comedy-of-errors road trip that will hopefully lead the boys to their big break. The young cast is filled with established young actors, like Mason Thames and Mckenna Grace, who are always electric together on screen, and up-and-comers like Kylr Coffman and Keen Ruffalo, who steal every scene they are in.
If you’re a superfan of Green Day, then this is the perfect movie for you. If you’re a fan of movies like Almost Famous, this is the film for you, as it has that chaotic tour energy that makes this comedy work so well. It’s kind of great to watch a movie that has that underrated ‘90s feel, so I recommend checking out Nimrods this weekend.
The year of Anne Hathaway continues with her fourth movie released this year. From It Follows writer-director David Robert Mitchell comes The End of Oak Street. The film follows Oak Street, a seemingly typical suburban street that is suddenly transported to someplace unknown after a mysterious cosmic event. Now, a family soon discovers that their survival in this new place depends on sticking together to make it out alive. And yes, there are dinosaurs. The movie feels like a throwback to the Steven Spielberg movies that defined a generation, like Jurassic Park, E.T., and more.
The ‘80s were a time of some of my absolute favorite sci-fi thrillers, so it’s no surprise that I had a blast watching The End of Oak Street in a theater. While this might not be the best Hathaway movie released this year, it does give us a wild movie to end the summer movie-theater season. Dare I say, it's one of the best dinosaur movies in a really long time (sorry, Jurassic World Rebirth).
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Have a question for me, or want to tell me what you’re watching right now, or have a suggestion of what I should watch next? Send it to me now at screentime@buzzfeed.com, in this Google form, or in the comments below!
