Last Updated: April 10th

There was a time when tales of aliens, space travel, and robots were believed to be the strict province of four-eyed basement dwellers, but the truth is that everybody can find something to enjoy in the weird world of science fiction. The best sci-fi works in both universal truths and hyperspecific detail, using fantastical yet fully-realized worlds to tell stories about our own.

Netflix‘s selection of good sci fi movies isn’t exhaustive, but there’s still plenty worth exploring nestled among the sequels and paycheck-generators. Keep on scrolling for 10 of the best sci-fi movies on Netflix streaming to watch right now, all taking you from the moon, the farthest reaches of space, and to the outer fringes of reality itself.

Related: The Best Sci-Fi Shows On Netflix Right Now

1. Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982)

Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 8.1/10

Harrison Ford’s lived long enough to see quite a few of his sci-fi franchises get the reboot treatment but this futuristic 80s flick still ranks as one of his best genre outings. Ford plays Rick Deckard, a blade runner charged with terminating four replicants — synthetic humans — who have escaped captivity and are plotting rebellion. Deckard treks across a dystopian Los Angeles, confronting ideas about humanity and morality while fighting off bioengineered humanoids and his fellow man.

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2. Ex Machina (2014)

Run Time: 108 min | IMDb: 7.7/10

Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller breathed new life into the tired A.I. trope when it landed in theaters a few years ago. The film focuses on a naïve young programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) who’s selected amongst a pool of applicants to evaluate a new A.I. lifeform. The poor kid is whisked away to a remote villa to spend time with the eerily-human-looking robot, Ava (Alicia Vikander) and her eccentric, often cruel creator Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a genius with an ego to match his talent. The film takes some twists you don’t expect, and Isaac gives cinema one of its greatest dance sequences, in case you needed more reason to watch.

3. The Matrix (1999)

Run Time: 136 min | IMDb: 8.7/10

The Wachowski sisters created one of the greatest sci-fi films in cinematic history with their mind-bending Matrix trilogy, but the original is hard to top. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, a young man unplugged from the matrix — a kind of alternate reality that keeps humans docile, so machines can harvest their life energy. He teams up with a band of rebels fighting the machines (Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus and Carrie-Ann Moss as Trinity) and faces off against a henchman named Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). The real draw of this trilogy, besides its inventive storyline, is the CGI effects. The movie also sports some of the most imaginative fight sequences you’ll ever see on the big screen.

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4. Her (2013)

Run Time: 126 mins | IMDb: 8/10

Spike Jonze imagines a world in which Artificial Intelligence can become something more than just a personal assistant program. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a depressed introvert going through a divorce who starts up a relationship with an OS named Samantha. Things get serious before Theodore begins to realize that romance with an A.I. is more complicated than he thought. What follows is a thoughtful exploration of love, relationships, and the ways human beings find a connection in a plugged-in world.

5. Equilibrium (2002)

Run Time: 107 min | IMDb: 7.4/10

Christian Bale and Sean Bean star in this sci-fi drama set in an oppressive future where all forms of emotion are outlawed. Bale plays a man named John Preston, who’s charged with enforcing the law, but when he accidentally forgets to take a dose of the medicine that suppresses feelings and artistic expression, he begins to question the system he upholds and, eventually, leads an uprising.

6. Okja (2017)

Run Time: 120 min | IMDb: 7.4/10

Bong Joon-Ho’s send-up of corporate farming and environmental abuses isn’t subtle. Tilda Swinton goes all-out as the CEO of an evil corporation only to be outdone by Jake Gyllenhaal’s broad turn as an unstable TV host. But its tale of an endearing, genetically modified “super pig” and the girl who loves him is effective and contains both some terrific action set pieces and the most affecting child/strange beast relationship this side of E.T.

7. Snowpiercer (2013)

Run Time: 126 min | IMDb: 7.1/10

Chris Evans stars in this sci-fi thriller from auteur Bong Joon-ho. The film, set years into the future following a devastating ice age caused by mankind, follows Evans’ Curtis who lives in poverty on a train that continuously circles the Earth and contains all that remains of human life. Curtis is part of the “scum” the people relegated to the back of the train while the “elite” enjoy the privilege of wealth and status that comes with living in the front. Curtis sparks a rebellion that ends in bloodshed and a devastating reveal when he makes it to the train’s engine room and discovers just how the elite have been fueling their operation. It’s a dark, grimy action piece that should give fans a new appreciation for Evans’ talent.

8. April And The Extraordinary World (2015)

Run Time: 105 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

In an alternate version of 1941 where France has been led by a line of Napoleons and leading scientists mysteriously disappear, young April, her talking cat Darwin, and the shady Julius go searching for April’s missing parents. It’s an interesting take on a history where technological advancement isn’t a thing, where “steampunk” is reality and TVs and cars don’t exist. April’s journey starts in the dreary, stuck-out-of-time France but leads her to fantastical advancements that still make sense in the world we’re presented with. The heart of the film lies in the love that plucky, stubborn April has for those she cares about, and the film’s driven by charming animation and a genuinely interesting concept. It’s enjoyable action that’s just out-there enough for adults while being accessible for the young and young at heart.

9. Moon (2009)

Run Time: 97 min | IMDb: 7.9/10

A beautiful, claustrophobic sci-fi film, Moon focuses on Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an employee on an extremely isolated solo mission harvesting resources on the moon. With the end of his contract in sight, his hope of returning to his family is put in jeopardy once he has an accident in a lunar module and makes a startling discovery. It’s best not to know more than that about the story as it would pooch the twist. With Rockwell being pretty much the only actor in the movie, Moon obviously relies heavily on him, both for levity and existentially dramatic turns, and he doesn’t disappoint.

10. Under The Skin (2007)

Run Time: 108 min | IMDb: 6.3/10

Scarlett Johansson stars in this sci-fi thriller about an other-worldly woman with a dark agenda. The film sees Johansson using her sex appeal to lure unsuspecting men to their watery doom while beginning to contemplate her own existence with every new partner she seduces. It’s a subtle reverse of rape culture, with themes of race and immigration mixed in, but if all of that goes over your head, you’ll at least enjoy seeing Johansson off a bunch of frat bros and rapists.

Recent Changes Through April 2020:
Removed: Men In Black
Added: The Matrix

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So, I treated watching the original Police Academy as kind of an experiment. Now, I haven’t seen any Police Academy movie in quite some time – Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol was on cable a few months ago and I caught maybe 20 minutes of it – and I certainly hadn’t seen the original film in ages … to the point I couldn’t even remember the plot. But I had been thinking: taken in its own, without its six sequels, is the first Police Academy good? Because when we think of Police Academy, what do we think of? We think of a punchline franchise of never-ending bad movies that, yes, granted, some people like to watch, in some sort of half satisfying, half ironic kind of way.

But … what if only the first Police Academy existed? Would it now be considered some sort of raunchy ‘80s classic? (I don’t want to create too many scenarios, but I think if it had only one sequel, this still applies. People still talk about Airplane! and Revenge of Nerds today and those survived less than great sequels.) Take a movie like Bachelor Party. It’s still remembered fondly as this weird outlier when Tom Hanks was doing comedies with nudity. There’s a whole subset of these kinds of movies – Risky Business, 48 Hours, Stripes – that were “fine” (and, yes, today, they have their “problems”), but they belong to a group cemented as defining for the era. Without the sequels, would Police Academy be on this list?

It’s weird to think of it this way, but the original Police Academy was the sixth highest-grossing movie of 1984. It made more money than Splash. The five movies ahead of it – Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, and The Karate Kid – are all considered canon, as well the movie right below it, Footloose. After rewatching the original Police Academy again for the first time in I don‘t know how long, it makes a lot of sense that, on its own, it belongs on that list.

Directed by Hugh Wilson (his only time helming a Police Academy movie, he would later direct First Wives Club), Police Academy stars Steve Guttenberg as Carey Mahoney (he’d do three more of these movies) and Kim Cattrall as Karen Thompson (she, perhaps wisely, didn’t do anymore). So, I’m going to cut to the chase: Rewatching the first Police Academy it turns out its an actual movie. It doesn’t have near as many dopey jokes and pratfalls that the other movies do, which is probably a big reason people don’t watch this one as much. If a fan of the whole franchise is looking for “something stupid,” this offers the least amount of that. It’s also rated R (the only one of the franchise to have this rating), so it has a couple of raunchy moments, but not as many as I expected. (Though, two separate characters get unexpected oral sex while giving a speech. The movie actually ends with one of these events. I have no memory of this happening, so I’m now convinced I’ve never seen the unedited-for -television version of Police Academy.) Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment is rated PG-13 and it seems like the strategy became, “Well, we can’t do raunchy humor anymore, so instead we will just amp of the pratfalls and character tropes.”

Again, maybe most surprisingly, this is an actual movie. The plot is, basically, the mayor of a city in need (filmed in Toronto, but the city was never named) opens up the ranks of the police force to people who would never have qualified before. The current police force is run by overtly racist and sexist men who don’t like the fact that they now have to train people of color and women. Mahoney (Guttenberg) is facing a jail term unless he enrolls in the academy, a sentence he accepts, but with a clear goal of being kicked out. The formula feels like a mix of Animal House and Stripes, only with the establishment being clearly bad people. (It’s actually shocking how overtly racist the villains of this movie are. Something that was clearly toned down in the other movies.)

Mahoney eventually gets his wish of being kicked out, but has a change of heart when riots hit the city and his fellow cadets are being sent into harm’s way. Police Academy then ends with an action-packed third act shootout that I also do not remember.

Also surprising: the characters aren’t complete caricatures yet. Yes, Jones (Michael Winslow) makes his fun noises, but it doesn’t happen as often as we might think and always seems to serve the plot. There’s actually a payoff at the end when Jones mimics the sound of gunfire over a loudspeaker to stop rioters from attacking a police car. Hightower (Bubba Smith) is fleshed out more, and his character plays a pivotal role after he’s kicked out of the academy for turning over a police car after someone uses (you guessed it) a racist epithet. And Hooks’ (Marion Ramsey) timid voice, turning into a screaming terror, is actually pretty funny in this first movie – as opposed to being something we come to expect in all the subsequent films. And even Tackleberry (David Graf) is played as a human being with some warmth and compassion, in between is action and gun obsession. Again, the biggest surprise about Police Academy is it’s an actual movie with an actual plot with actual characters.

Also a little surprising is how many characters we never see again, who were replaced in the sequels by far more famous characters. Of course, there’s Kim Cattrall’s character, as Cattrall was destined for bigger and better things. Cadet Leslie Barbara is a major character in this film, yet we never see him again. But we don’t meet Zed and Sweetchuck until the second movie. And, yes, it is weird Steve Guttenberg did four of these movies. It’s a franchise that both launched his career and, frankly, probably hampered it, too. I wonder what Guttenberg’s career looks like if he had only done the first film?

According to Wikipedia, sourced to a Chicago Tribune piece that’s not online, Guttenberg is quoted as saying about the second Police Academy film, “I wasn’t too sold on doing the sequel. I didn’t think the script was as good as the first one. But it has been improved, and after I talked with [producer] Paul [Maslansky], I decided to give it another try.” No, those don’t sound like the words of someone completely invested in the project.

So, is it good? I mean, it’s “fine,” like most of the movies like this from that era. But I completely understand why it was as successful as it was in 1984 – and why each sequel saw less and less box office returns. And I also get why it’s maybe the least talked about of the movies. As Police Academy delved more and more into schlock, fans starting expecting the schlock. So, now, the original film is almost too nondescript to be particularly interesting to a rowdy, beer-drinking crew looking for stupid humor. It’s the best movie, but maybe the worst Police Academy movie, if that makes sense. But, on its own, it’s actually a pretty tight comedy with an actual plot. And, yes, I have convinced myself that if there were only one Police Academy movie, it’s would be considered today, and remembered today (with some reservations that any comedy from this era would have), pretty fondly.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

We are five seasons deep into Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Better Call Saul, but so far, the two lead characters — Jimmy McGill and Jonathan Banks — have only pinged off of each other occasion. Their paths have crossed occasionally, and the two have done each other favors, but there’s nothing on Better Call Saul that has really bonded the two characters together. Yet.

That changed this week with the eighth episode of the season, “Bagman,” in which Jimmy and Jonathan spent most of the episode together traversing the desert on foot while Jimmy carried $7 million in two heavy bags, money meant to pay for Lalo Salamanca’s bond. This came after Mike used his sharp-shooter skills to effectively neutralize a small gang. The episode also featured a scene in which Jimmy drank his own urine in order to save off dehydration, and according to the folks on this week’s Better Call Saul podcast, the writers have been noodling episode titles for this episode of years: “Urine Trouble. Urine Danger. Urine the Money. Urine Over Your Head. Urine for it Now.”

It’s also the kind of episode that can bring two people together, and I think that by the end of the episode — after Jimmy put his life on the line while trusting Mike’s sharp-shooting skills — Mike gained an immense amount of respect for Jimmy. That bond, of course, is crucial to their loose partnership in Breaking Bad.

Speaking of Breaking Bad, this episode was shot in the same place that parts of “Ozymandias” — arguably the best episode of Breaking Bad, and one of the best episodes of any show ever — was shot. It was also directed by Vince Gilligan, who typically shoots premieres or finales. However, this season, Gilligan’s availability did not come open until he’d finished shooting El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.

“I put the right guy in the seat for this episode,” showrunner Peter Gould said during this week’s episode of the Better Call Saul podcast. “This was the hardest single thing I will ever do,” Vince Gilligan replies. The episode took seventeen-and-a-half days to shoot, which is twice the normal schedule for an episode on Saul.

But the episode itself has been a long time in the making, according to its creators, Gilligan and Gould.

“When we started the show,” Gould said on the podcast, “Vince and I were kicking around who could be on the show. Obviously, we’d have Bob [Odenkirk], and we’d call it Better Call Saul, if Bob is willing to do it. Who from Breaking Bad should be on the show?” they wondered. “And we both knew right away that it has to be Mike, It has to be Jonathan. He has to be on the show.”

And as we were both saying that,” Gould continued, “I think we both had the image of Midnight Run, which is personally one of my favorite movies.” Midnight Run is a 1988 action-comedy starring Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin about an accountant who is chased by bounty hunters, the F.B.I., and the Mafia after jumping bail. “And just the idea of [Bob and Jonathan] together kind of, well, for years, we were pitching that they were handcuffed together. And that’s what I thought the show was going to be when we started.”

The road-trip buddy movie obviously did not come to immediate fruition on the series, as Mike and Jimmy have spent most of their time apart. However, as Gould noted on the podcast, “on the 48th episode of the show, we finally got to do what I thought we would do on the second episode.” That was “Bagman,” the kind of episode they envisioned when they came up with the premise for this show, and the kind of episode that will arguably go down as one of the best ever of Better Call Saul.

Source: Better Call Saul Insider Podcast

Death Cab For Cutie’s commercial breakthrough came in 2003 with Transatlanticism, their fourth album. The group released a string of records before that, though, and their sophomore effort, We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. The album came out on March 21, 2000, and to mark the occasion, Ben Gibbard devoted his most recent livestream performance to the record.

Gibbard’s set last night featured only songs from We Have The Facts, as he played the full album front-to-back: “Title Track,” “The Employment Pages,” “For What Reason,” “Lowell, MA,” “405,” “Little Fury Bugs,” “Company Calls,” “Company Calls Epilogue,” “No Joy In Mudville,” and “Scientist Studies.”

Throughout the set, Gibbard also answered questions about the album and about the band during that era, so the stream is a real must-watch for fans of the album. Gibbard also noted that Barsuk Records is giving away an out-of-print first pressing vinyl copy of the album.

This was Gibbard’s second weekly livestream performance after he previously performed daily. Last week, he decided to devote part of his set to Fountains Of Wayne member Adam Schlesinger, who recently passed away due to coronavirus complications.

Watch Gibbard’s full performance above.

Death Cab For Cutie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — This is the time for shows with small worlds

I have a theory. I have a lot of theories, actually. Most of them are bad. I have one theory that we don’t need wind and would be better off without it. (CON: no more cool breezes in the summer; PRO: no more hurricane or tornados.) I haven’t looked up any of the consequences or consulted a single scientist. I just believe it to be true. That’s enough for that theory. Some of them are better and more grounded in logic, like my belief that all spoons should be soup spoons (wider, deeper, fewer spills) and the one that I’m going to discuss below: that this is the perfect time to enjoy a television show with lower stakes, one that deals with small world problems instead of catastrophes.

I love a good small world show even in good times. There’s something exhausting about shows and movies constantly dealing with scenarios where the entire world is at risk. These kinds of stories have always existed but they seem to be more prevalent now, possibly as a result of the trend towards superheroes and comics. The other problem is that, like, you can’t go backwards very easily. The stakes generally only go up as a series or franchise continues. You can’t have Superman stop the apocalypse in one movie and then have him save a bakery in the next. And with the stakes always going up and up and up, you can lose some of the humanity of it all. The relatable issues. The stuff that’s real to regular people who never have to prevent Charlize Theron from stealing a nuclear submarine from an ice-covered military base. Or at least, to people who haven’t yet. It’s crazy out there. You never know.

I bring this up now for the obvious reasons but also because Schitt’s Creek ended its run this week. What a fun and nice show that was, just warm and charming and very, very funny. The thing I liked most about it was how human it was, how even though I am not now nor have I ever been a former billionaire who was forced to move into a small motel in a town with a goofy name that I owned a joke, it was relatable in a million ways. It was about family and friendships and relationships and the biggest tangible issues they faced were, to choose one example, how to put on a musical. It was more than that, obviously, as the heart of the show ran deep, but it was nice to not be worried about a meteor hitting the town and killing everyone from week to week.

There are a lot of shows like this, of course. Sitcoms have a long history of finding entertainment in little things. Parks and Recreation was about civil servants putting on festivals, Friends was about friends, The Office was about people working in an office. A good recent example: High Fidelity, the Hulu version starring Zoe Kravitz, which had no right to be as good as it was. I watched it all in about two sittings. I might watch it again while I’m stuck at home. Maybe I’ll rewatch New Girl, or Happy Endings, or any other very chill hangout show where stressed-out high-achievers and slacker lunkheads sit on a sofa together and let the day take them wherever it goes. Maybe I’ll watch Joe Pera grow that bean arch again. There are plenty of options.

The point here is not to slander those shows where catastrophe looms. I loved Watchmen and all of its squid-raining calamity. I’m enjoying Westworld as it wages a Humans v. Robots war for civilization. I am on record as hoping the next Fast & Furious movie features a villain who wants to blow up the moon. That’s all great. But it’s really stressful out there in the real world right now. Too stressful. Cut yourself some slack once in a while. Watch a nice show about cool people trying to figure out normal stuff. You deserve it.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — This was a good idea

I don’t know whose idea it was to call-up Tracy Morgan in the middle of a pandemic and put him on live network television before lunch on a weekday but, once we’re through this and allowed to touch each other again, I am going to find that person and kiss them on the mouth. A big sloppy kiss, like the ones Bugs Bunny gave to the people he was in the middle of frustrating. A real smackeroo. Right on the lips.

I mean, it’s beautiful. And completely nuts. I admittedly have a higher tolerance for pure and unfiltered chaos than some, but I don’t see how anyone could not love this. Tracy Morgan in a damn surgical mask shouting at Honda Kotb about getting people pregnant is like something you would have seen on 30 Rock, and yet, there he was, in real life, introducing a delicious amount of anarchy into the traditionally anarchy-free genre of morning television. He also showed up on some late-night shows later in the week to do more of the same, which was fine and perfectly welcome, but it’s the morning show part of it that really delighted me. Tracy Morgan should be on morning television way more. Like, every day. In fact…

Wait a second.

We have an idea brewing.

Yes, here it is: Let’s just give Tracy Morgan a morning show. Or plug him into an existing morning show. Let’s lose Seacrest and pair Tracy Morgan with Kelly Ripa. Tell me that’s not immediately a must-watch hour of television. Or plug him in for Drew Carey on The Price Is Right. Let Tracy Morgan explain Plinko to a nation of bored quarantined couch potatoes. He can do it from his house via Skype. Or something. I need to stress how unimportant to me the logistics of all of this are. I’m doing big picture stuff here. I’m putting together the grand scheme. Leave the details to the details people.

Everyone could use a little chaos with their coffee. This is how we do it.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Guy Fieri, good dude

I owe Guy Fieri an apology. I spent the first few years of his career poking fun at his spiky hair and shirt collection and general vibe. A lot of us did. Most of us, I think. I’ve used that picture up there a thousand times for a laugh and I guess I’m using it here, too, so let’s go ahead and say I owe Guy Fieri a second apology for using it when I was supposed to be apologizing the first time. I’m sorry twice. Not sorry enough to find a different picture (it’s really very funny), but sorry enough to own up to, at least. Has to count for something. Right?

Anyway, the apologies are owed because Guy Fieri seems like an incredibly good dude. There’s a long history of him donating his time and resources to good causes and, hell, even his television show works like a charity in the way it highlights small businesses around the country. Again, good dude. It’s one of the many reasons I almost cracked my mouse by clicking too fast on this article, titled “Guy Fieri is in quarantine with 400 goats, a peacock problem and a plan to help restaurant employees.”

Yes. Yes, I will read that. Hit me, WaPo.

Unable to resume production on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” Fieri has channeled his energy into partnering with the association on its restaurant employee relief fund, which will be distributed to eligible applicants in $500 grants.

As of Friday, the fund had reached $10 million. Fieri has a goal of 10 times that — because “you can’t go on a road trip and not have a destination” — that he aims to achieve with corporate sponsors.

“I’ve been in the restaurant business my whole life. This is all I know,” Fieri says. “The TV thing is kind of like ‘Happy Gilmore.’ ‘I’m a hockey player,’ and then he gets into golfing. This is what I do. I love the restaurant business, and I know it inside and out. As soon as this happened and the restaurants started closing, I looked at my wife and said, ‘What are all these people going to do?’

”

Guy Fieri rules. The haters can find me in the Flavortown octagon if they have a problem.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — It is time, once again, to discuss the b-holes

Cats has fascinated me since its first trailer and it continues to fascinate me to this day even though I have yet to see it. I will see it. I will see it very much and very hard. Soon, I imagine. But not yet. And until I do see, well, I will continue to be fascinated by every part of it. Like, for example, the infamous “butthole cut” that either exists or doesn’t exist and features the anuses of the CGI cats for reasons that can be explained as… as… actually, no. It can’t be explained. But thank god for it and for its continued shelf-life as a matter of public discourse, because without articles like this one, from an alleged source who allegedly worked on erasing the buttholes after someone became very angry about then, I honestly don’t know what I would do. All of my movies are delayed until next year. Daddy needs something to occupy his time. This will do.

Go.

“We paused it,” the source said. “We went to call our supervisor, and we’re like, ‘There’s a fucking asshole in there! There’s buttholes!’ It wasn’t prominent but you saw it… And you [were] just like, ‘What the hell is that?… There’s a fucking butthole in there.’ It wasn’t in your face—but at the same time, too, if you’re looking, you’ll see it.”

I am not joking even a little when I tell you that I would have given $400 to be the person who received this phone call. Or the one who made it. Or just a secretary who was on the call to take notes. Anything. The joy it would have given me… it’s incalculable.

Some aspects of the production, the source alleges, became simply absurd—like when Hooper would demand to see videos of actual cats performing the same actions the cats would do in the film. “And as you know,” the source said, “cats don‘t dance.”

Cats is the only good movie, a position I plan to confirm once I sit down and actually watch it at some point in the next two to two hundred weeks.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Matthew McConaughey, play virtual Battleship with me

Well, Matthew McConaughey hosted a virtual bingo game for seniors in Texas. It happened. There are news articles about it and everything. Like this one.

A video posted to the living facility’s Facebook page showed McConaughey cheering on bingo winners. “During a time when we are all working to make lemonade out of lemons, we are so humbled that Matthew took the time to play our favorite game with us,” employees at the living facility wrote. “As Matthew would say, let’s turn this red light into a green light!”

This is very nice and very sweet and very cool and it makes me so angry I might heave my computer on the floor. Play games with ME, Matthew! I’m bored, too. You pick the game. I offered Battleship but we can play whatever you want. Trivial Pursuit? I am very good at Trivial Pursuit. Scrabble? Come get your whooping, buddy. I am very competitive and have a lot of free time on the weekends now. The challenge has been leveled. Ball’s in your court.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at brian.grubb@uproxx.com (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Rich:

With Bosch coming back next week, I have to ask you about Bosch’s house. It’s so cool, right? Of all the houses I see on television with regularity, that’s the one I’m most jealous of. Maybe it’s just the view out his glass wall. I want to sit there with a book and a glass of scotch and stare out at the city all night. What do you think? How much do you want to live in that Bosch house?

Rich brings up an excellent point. Bosch does have a cool house, one he purchased with the proceeds of a movie deal based on a case of his. It’s way up in the Los Angeles hills and it does have that killer view of the city below and I wanted to live in it very much UNTIL I saw this shot of it from another angle.

No. No thank you. No thank you at all. I do not want to live in a stilt house built into a mountain in an earthquake-prone region of the world. I would be stressed out all the time. I’m stressed out now just thinking about it. I want to live in a house that has all of its floor firmly attached to the ground, not by stilts. This is my request. I consider it very reasonable.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To New York City!

“The risk is serious,” said Steve Keller, a museum security consultant who has worked with the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and others. “Thieves might think the museums are in a weakened condition and that increases the threat.”

Is it weird that a combination of museum closings and the rise in people wearing bandanas over the face made me immediately jump to “this is the perfect time for a heist”? It’s weird, right? You can tell me. I know my brain is hopelessly ruined. It is true, though. As this article elaborates.

Last week burglars broke into a small museum in the Netherlands that had closed because of the coronavirus and absconded with an early van Gogh painting, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring.” Police responding to the museum’s alarm found a shattered glass door and a bare spot on the wall where the painting had been.

Look, I’m not saying any of you should steal a valuable painting or handful of jewels from an empty understaffed museum right now. That would be wrong. You should not steal, in general, and you should especially not take advantage of a pandemic to steal. But if you were already planning on stealing a valuable painting or a handful of jewels, if I can’t dissuade you at all, there’s certainly a worse time to do it. That’s all I’m saying. But don’t do it. And don’t tell anyone I told you this. And don’t ask where I was this weekend if a valuable painting or handful of jewels go missing. Am I making this clear enough? I think I am.

For the duration of the pandemic, Mr. Keller said, museums should assume that they would be in permanent “night mode,” relying on security measures that are generally in place when institutions close for the evening.

Limber up, folks. We have lasers to dance through.

If we do this.

Which we shouldn’t.

WINK.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

When the British singer-songwriter Laura Marling first emerged in the mid-aughts as a 16-year-old prodigy, she seemed like an old soul. A leading light of the so-called “nu-folk” scene — a somewhat backhanded term invented by the English press to describe acts like Mumford & Sons and Noah And The Whale, which she briefly joined — Marling looked and sounded like she stepped off the cover of an old Fairport Convention LP. With her striking, wise-sounding vocals, penetrating confessional lyrics, and lilting traditional melodies, she made records that already sounded like they had existed for 40 years before she even exited her teens.

But even as Marling continued to grow her audience on 2013’s epochal Once I Was An Eagle, 2015’s underrated Short Movie, and 2017’s Grammy-nominated Semper Femina, she began to experience the side effects of launching a music career at such as young age. The wise-beyond-her-years quality of her voice, as well as the incisiveness of her songwriting, belied a tendency to youthfully quest in her personal life. At age 21, she relocated to Los Angeles, a decision that she later confided was an attempt to find herself as she entered young adulthood. She was also less famous in the US than at home in the UK. She seized this relative anonymity, cutting her hair and taking a job as a yoga instructor. Reflecting on this period years later, Marling admitted that she “had no identity. It was really, really, really difficult,” she says. “I was socially bankrupt.”

Another period of significant self-reflection preceded the making of Marling’s latest album out today, Song For Our Daughter. She moved back home to London, living not far from her oldest sister and niece; another sister moved into Marling’s home. She also decided to pursue a master’s degree in psychoanalysis, both because she was interested in that field of study and also as a way to make up for the time she lost by not going to college. (In an interesting parallel, Marling’s fellow singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten has also taken to pursing a psychology degree in her spare time away from music.) Even when Marling has worked in music in the years since Semper Femina, it was outside of her earnest folkie lane — she collaborated with Tunng’s Mike Lindsay in the experimental outfit LUMP, and composed scores for acclaimed British theater director and playwright Robert Icke.

The relatively settled nature of Marling’s life at the moment — as well as her interest in psychoanalysis — seems to have inspired her work on Daughter, which joins the ranks of Once I Was An Eagle and Short Movie as one of her very best albums. Marling has described Daughter as a song cycle addressed to the child that she might have one day, in which the prospective mother unloads wisdom and warnings about “all of the bullshit that she might be told,” as she sings on the title track. But at the risk of psychoanalyzing the psychoanalysis student, Song For Our Daughter also evokes what Carl Jung once described as the divine or inner child — these songs seem to be Marling’s way of dialoguing with previous versions of herself, and charting the progress she’s made as an artist and human being.

In that way Song For Our Daughter feels both like a culmination of Marling’s catalogue up to this point, and also like something of a fresh start. On the former point, Marling has returned to long-time musical partners Ethan Johns and Dom Monks, who assist in giving Marling’s songs that old-time early ’70s British folk feel, with lustrous acoustic strums playing off sumptuously recorded string sections in the manner of her best-regarded work.

But at the same time, this feels like the least fussed-over of her albums. Marling apparently valued immediacy above all else, often sticking to first takes and vigorous, straight-forward arrangements. While the album wasn’t recorded under quarantine — though our current crisis did bump up the album’s release by several months, coming just under a week after Marling announced the LP via her Instagram — it does feel more or less like someone singing to you from the other side of the kitchen table.

This casualness suits the songs, which are among the most conversational and direct that she’s written. The album’s catchiest number, “Strange Girl,” has the off-hand pop durability of a deathless Sheryl Crow radio hit. (The song’s standout warning — “Stay low, keep brave” — also functions as the album’s nutgraf.) “For You” is dreamier, but it has a similar resolve that speaks to a more grown-up perspective. “Love is not the answer,” she sings, “but the line that marks the start.”

Marling also plays off the work of others in fascinating ways. On the stunning “Alexandra,” Marling playfully engages with Leonard Cohen’s “Alexandra Leaving,” writing about the titular protagonist from a feminine perspective, while the tough but tender takes a line lifted from one of Ickes’ plays — “love is a sickness cured by time” — and spins it into a bittersweet lesson about navigating life’s peaks and valleys.

Marling’s adherence to tradition and her recent artistic and personal growth achieve a kind of perfect harmony on the album’s best song, “Fortune.” Set to an elegantly finger-picked guitar line that evokes the loveliest ancient British folk melodies, “Fortune” is inspired by Marling’s own mother keeping a “running away fund” when she was younger, which she spins into a breathtakingly pretty story song that lands on a tragic denouement I wouldn’t dream of spoiling. In “Fortune,” you can hear the budding folkie Marling once was and the supremely skilled master she has become, playing a song that is simple yet profound, like a personal journey through life.

Song For Our Daughter is out now on Partisan Records. Get it here.

There is no telling what content stockpiles exist in the Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon bunkers, sparking a sure sense of wonder: what’s gonna be announced today? Is a formerly theater-bound film taking the expressway into people’s living rooms? Is it a series that somehow managed to get all of its episodes produced under the quarantine wire? It’s fun! And today brings news that Jerry Seinfeld is set to release 23 Hours To Kill, a new Netflix comedy special on May 5. This is also fun! And a little rare.

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, occasional late-night appearances, and an active stand-up career (most regularly at the Beacon Theater in New York) have kept Seinfeld present in comedy culture, but he hasn’t gone all in with the explosion of comedy specials like most other comedy stars. 2017’s Jerry Before Seinfeld Netflix special was the one exception, reflecting on his early days in comedy. Prior to that, Seinfeld released HBO’s I’m Telling You For The Last Time, which dropped just three months after the final episode of Seinfeld and felt like a goodbye with him retiring a lot of his classic material. Released in 1987, Seinfeld Confidential marked his first stand-up special, introducing a lot of that same classic material.

Whether Seinfeld mixes in any nostalgia with this new special is, at this point, unknown. The press release doesn’t make mention of it and it seems like a pretty straight forward effort recorded at The Beacon Theater during one of his many concerts months before the present situation fully unfolded. Meaning even if it’s all-new material or that which hasn’t been on a special before, it won’t feel completely reflective of this exact moment. Which is a good thing. What Seinfeld does is connect us to realizations about the absurdity of normal life, offering a chance for us to laugh about it and ourselves. To say it’s a proven formula is an epic understatement. It’s also something I’m not quite ready to let go of. So, perhaps this special serves as a reminder and a connection to that thing that we can and should get back to in the hopefully near future. If nothing else, it’ll be good for a laugh and a reminder of Seinfeld’s legendary chops.

Once again, 23 Hours To Kill debuts on May 5 on Netflix.

Self-isolation has been the norm for weeks now as the coronavirus pandemic continues, and through it all, musicians are remaining active. Leon Bridges is the latest to share some new quarantine material, as he just released the appropriately titled “Inside Friend,” which features John Mayer.

The song is about dating as an introvert, and Bridges sings on the first verse of the smooth track, “Slide through when you want / You know I want to put you on / It’s evil out there / Let’s keep it at home.”

Bridges says the song actually first came about before the pandemic, but he decided to dust the track off now that it is thematically relevant:

“The concept for ‘Inside Friend’ came about from Mayer and I joking around in the studio about what an ideal date for an introvert or homebody like myself would be. I tour most of the year, so I’d rather invite a gal over to lounge comfortably in the crib as opposed to go out somewhere crowded. ‘Inside Friend’ stayed on the back burner for a while because it didn’t fit within the context of my third project, but the current state we’re in globally compelled us to dig this back up and finish it. I hope people find it soothing and uplifting while we hole up indoors and get through this.”

Listen to “Inside Friend” above.