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Parasite
The Best Picture-winning Parasite is director Bong Joon-ho at his very best. At turns hilarious and deeply unsettling, it’s a departure from the sci-fi bent of his recent movies (the post-apocalyptic Snowpiercer in 2013 and the factory-farming-themed Okja in 2017), though it’s no less concerned with the state of society, and specifically how the disparity between the haves and have-nots seems to be widening. The resulting film offers an at turns hilarious and deeply unsettling look at class and survival.
(Now Streaming, Hulu, $5.99 per month, free trial here) JASMYNE KEIMIG
Find the G-Spot
She Bop is a local treasure for anyone who gives a damn about making sex as good as it can be, and that should include everyone reading this sentence right now. Their storefronts are closed but you can still order their fine goods online, and even better, you can sign up for helpful online classes like today’s online tutorial from Stella Harris, “Mapping the Vulva: Licking, Touching, Teasing, and Talking,” aimed at dispelling misinformation, clearing up any sense of mystery and eradicating all sense of shame centered there. Basically, if you want to know how to unlock a “whole world of pleasure,” this class should be a very good start.
(Wed April 8, 5:30 pm, She Bop via Zoom, $25)
Thundercat
Stephen Bruner is finally in the spotlight. After years playing bass for punk legends Suicidal Tendencies, dropping beats for Snoop Dogg and Flying Lotus, and being a behind-the-scenes musical architect of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Bruner is gaining success as a standalone artist, delivering deliciously funky basslines, jazz solos, and haunting falsetto under the stage name Thundercat. Because of his wide-ranging resume, Thundercat is able to seamlessly fuse genres, blending ’90s R&B with Miles Davis-era jazz to produce tracks that have everyone nodding along to the beat. He rightfully headlined the 2020 PDX Jazz Festival, and he just dropped a new album worth soaking in for a day or two, titled It Is What It Is. ALEX ZIELINSKI
Parks and Recreation
This lockdown is providing a lot of opportunities to discover new works of art, and to revisit old ones, and this week, why not rewatch one of the gentlest, kindest sitcoms of the last couple decades (Parks and Recreation) with its star (Amy Poehler)? To clarify: She’s not hosting a watch-along on Zoom or Insta or anything like that. But she is binge-ing the whole show right now with her kids, so in spirit you can be watching it right along with her! She made the case for rewatching it on Late Night with Seth Meyers last week: “It is such a good show to watch right now, because it makes you feel good, and it’s about a bunch of people working together to solve problems. But it’s really funny, because my kids are always like, ‘Mom, what happens?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember any of it!’ It’s one long blur. I remember shooting the scenes and how I felt when I was shooting the scenes, but the actual story of episode-to-episode, I couldn’t even tell you. So it’s pretty fun watching again.” Even if you do remember the story, she’s still not wrong. Parks & Rec is a show that’s almost always fun to watch again. Anything with a theme song that bouncy alone…
(Now Streaming, Netflix , Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube)
Mdou Moctar
There are around three million Tuareg people living in the Saharan region of Africa, and they turn out an impressive number of musicians who find audiences in other parts of the world. There’s Tinariwen, Bombino, Tamikrest, and Imarhan, and now it’s unquestionably Mdou Moctar’s turn. The Nigerian guitarist first made a name for himself on African MP3-sharing networks and has raised his international profile over the past several years with a series of excellent albums released on the Portland-based Sahel Sounds record label. His newest—last year’s Ilana: The Creator—is an intoxicating fusion of hypnotic rhythms and searing guitar work that will go down as one of 2019’s best releases in any genre. BEN SALMON