February Binges Part 2: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms & Wonder Man

So many new shows to watch, so little time. This month, my husband and I miraculously found two shows we both wanted to watch and have now finished them, so it's your turn to give them a try!

Wonder Man: Yes, it's another Marvel show, but I swear, it's great! Created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, this is a short and sweet eight-episode miniseries about Simon Williams (the divine Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a struggling actor in LA who has been waiting to get his big break for years, but keeps getting the rug pulled out from under him. It probably doesn't help that he gets way too into his own head and his acting process and can become a tad difficult to work with, even if he just has a bit part. Enter Trevor Slattery (the divine Ben Kingsley), the man who was assumed to be the terrorist, the Mandarin, in Iron Man 3, only for the world to discover he was just a struggling British actor who auditioned for this terrorist role and had no idea he was colluding with actual villains. Do I remember any of this from a movie that came out in 2013? Hell no. But did I happily just go along with it so I could watch this hilarious odd couple run around LA doing auditions for a new superhero movie called Wonder Man? Hell yes.

This is a very LA show and a very fun insight into how actors struggle to find work, and all the changes wrought by the pandemic, like self-tape studios. There's a lot of discussion about process, as Trevor tries to help Simon loosen up some more so he can show the world just how great an actor he is. But of course, there's still a lot of action and drama, because it turns out Simon's powers may not just be limited to his acting ability. The show has many twists and turns, so I'll let you wind your way through them for yourself. Episode 4, Doorman, is a particularly odd and wonderful extravaganza. This show is a Marvel TV classic, kind of kooky and fantastical, but grounded in great characters with actors doing their best work and having a lot of fun. It's a short and sweet treat and I highly recommend it.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Yes, it's a spin-off of Game of Thrones, but it's nothing like Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon. Created by Ira Parker and George R. R. Martin, it's based on a series of novellas by Martin, and takes place 90 years before the events of Game of Thrones. It tells the very small but potent story of Dunk (Peter Claffey), a gangly, poor, and naive hedge knight who is making his way to a tourney to see if he can joust his way into glory. Along the way, he picks up a young, bald urchin named Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell, giving the performance of a lifetime), who desperately wants to be Dunk's squire and will not take no for an answer.

The show is only six episodes long, and each episode is about a half hour, so it goes down smooth. It's quite comical, because Dunk has no idea what's he doing, he and Egg are frequently exasperated with each other, and yet you are fervently rooting for them to succeed in this wild and terrible world where everyone is just scrabbling for a better existence. There are a lot of vibes, but when the action gets going, it gets going with a bang and you'll be on the edge of your seat. I can't wholeheartedly recommend the show, because I did find the pacing to be a little stop-and-start and I am not that invested in the wider Thrones universe. But I loved the actors and the (mostly) lighter tone of the proceedings, so I will certainly tune in to Season 2 when it comes out.

February Movies Part 3: Send Help & Crime 101

Are you currently trapped at home in a blizzard? Once you leave, are you ready for a fun time at the movies? Well, I've got one comedy horror for you, and one slick action heist movie. Pick your poison!

Send Help: I had not seen a single trailer for this film, but from seeing the movie poster and hearing the hype, I knew Rachel McAdams was in it and that it was kind of bloody and kind of funny. Sold. More surprisingly, my husband really wanted to see this film, and I was confused as to why. Well, within the first ten minutes, it became clear, because one of the plot points is that Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a huge fan of the reality TV show, Survivor, as is my husband. This becomes a good thing for Linda, because when she is flying on a private jet with her odious boss and his nepotistic cronies, there is a storm and they crash on a remote island, where they now have to survive and hope to be rescued.

The boss, Bradley (Dylan O'Brien), is a typical frat bro with a punchable face, who inherited the company after his father died, and thinks Linda is an unattractive, boring accountant who doesn't deserve a promotion. Meanwhile, like many women in corporate America, Linda is the woman who runs the show and knows how to crunch the numbers, but the men around her keep taking credit for her work. When she and Bradley are stranded on this island as sole survivors of the plane crash, she is finally in a position of authority where maybe she will be able to command respect from Bradley. But you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and she struggles to get him to see her worth, even as she provides, food, water, shelter, fire, and medical aid during their first few days there. 

Things start to spiral even further, and while Bradley is the villain of the piece, let's just say that eventually Linda does her own share of psychotic things. I mean, I still support Linda, but girl. You got issues. Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift and directed by Sam Raimi, this movie is a mindless, fun, gory romp, and while there are some twists you'll see coming from a mile away, there are still plenty of fun jump scares and laugh out loud moments to keep you entertained for a solid two hours.

Crime 101: Written and directed by Bart Layton, this movie features a truly all-star cast that you rarely get to see outside of a Marvel movie or Ocean's Eleven. Chris Hemsworth stars as Mike, a man who excels in conducting jewelry heists with extreme precision and minimum harm. No one ever gets hurt when he robs them, but he walks away with a ton of money, which the police and insurance companies are not happy about. One of those policemen is Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo, playing another sad, shlubby detective like his character in Task), who is obsessed with finding this jewel thief, particularly because he is the only person who believes all these crimes are the work of one single individual. Determined to find a pattern, he figures out that all the crimes seem to take place alongside the 101 freeway, which explains the title of the film.

Meanwhile, Halle Berry plays Sharon, an insurance broker who is increasingly disillusioned with her job of insuring the possessions of eye-wateringly rich and obnoxious folk in the LA area. When Mike approaches her for some inside information for a potential heist, she debates if crime might be better than corporate America. Much like Linda Liddle, I suppose. Monica Barbaro also stars as a woman who is dating Mike and assiduously ignoring all of his red flags (the dating scene is ROUGH y'all), while Barry Keoghan also shows up as a criminal who is haunting Mike and trying to score off his robberies. He is a psychopath who seems to have no qualms about hurting people, so how's that going to pan out for everyone? You'll have to watch to find out!

This is a classic Hollywood heist movie, told with flair, and actually filmed in LA, so it's even more Hollywood than most. The actors are all on top of their game and it's fun to follow this game of cat-and-mouse to its inevitable conclusion where everyone gets a happy ending of sorts. It's two and a half hours long, but you really don't feel that run time as there are plenty of car chases and robberies to keep you entertained. It's a good afternoon at the movies if you're in dire need of some escapism.

February Movies Part 2: The Moment & Wuthering Heights

It's a Charli XCX special today. We have one mockumentary about her going on tour to promote her Brat album, and then we have Emerald Fennell's highly divisive adaptation of a beloved piece of gothic literature that features an appropriately chaotic soundtrack by Charli XCX. Let's dive right in for some glorious insanity.

The Moment: Directed by Aidan Zamiri, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Bertie Brandes, this is a hilarious and incisive mockumentary about the current life of a pop star. Charli XCX stars as herself (well, a ridiculous version of herself), at the height of her stardom in 2024 after Brat Summer. Her record label is desperate to keep the momentum going through various marketing promotions and constant hype, leaving Charli exhausted and more than a little vulnerable. They also want to film her concert tour for Amazon, which means hiring a super weird director, Johannes (played by Alexander Skarsgard, the king of being a comically sleazy Scandinavian), who clashes with Charli's friend and trusted creative director, Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates). Meanwhile, her hapless manager, Tim (played by Jamie Demetriou, the patron saint of hapless characters), tries to juggle all her commitments and money-making ventures, with varying levels of success.

Everything is chaotic, messy, and set to Charli's rave music, which is eminently danceable, but in this film is used more to induce a sense of a heart attack. Do not watch this film if you're prone to photoepileptic seizures, that's for sure. There are so many jokes to keep the momentum going: I especially enjoyed a marketing ploy to promote limited edition Brat credit cards to young, queer people, where Charli appears to be the only sensible person who questions, "how does the bank know they're queer?" I had a great time giggling throughout this film, and even if you aren't a fan of Charli's music, this is a very funny and painfully accurate summary of influencer culture, social media, and the toll that fame takes on young artists these days. If you get tired of Charli's music, there's also a particularly delicious needle drop at the end of this movie that heralds this as a quintessentially British production. I loved it so.

Wuthering Heights: This movie has been extremely polarizing so let's get this out of the way - I loved it. As far as I'm concerned, Emerald Fennell is one of my favorite directors, and I will watch anything she does with a big ol' smile on my face. It perhaps helps that I hate Emily Bronte's 1847 novel and never regarded it as a swoony romance. I always saw Heathcliff and the other characters as odious people, and thankfully, my girl Fennell agrees. So what follows is a glorious adaptation that is scrumptious to behold, but makes no bones about the ugliness of its protagonists.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star as Cathy and Heathcliff, the doomed lovers at the center of our tale. We first follow them as children: Cathy is the only daughter of the impoverished and abusive Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes, having a jolly time hamming it up as an alcoholic degenerate gambler), and she has a paid companion, Nelly (the bastard daughter of a nobleman), who strives to be the voice of reason when Cathy is prone to her more dramatic fits. One day, Mr. Earnshaw brings home Heathcliff, a boy who was being beaten by his father on the road. He declares that Heathcliff can be Cathy's "pet," but obviously, he's nothing more than a servant boy, who is also subject to Mr. Earnshaw's abuses and tyrannies. Cathy and Heathcliff quickly become fast friends, however, and as they grow up, it becomes clear that maybe their friendship is becoming a little bit more...lusty.

The imagery in this movie is hilarious, with Fennell managing to make egg yolks and slugs seem so sexy that I will never look at them in the same way again. The costume design by Jacqueline Durran is absolutely unparalleled, and the cinematography by Linus Sandgren makes every frame of this film look like it should be in a museum. I could simply stare at this movie all day, while the weird and eerie Charli XCX soundtrack thumped around me. Everything about the film is a little anachronistic - the fabrics of some of the dresses seem like they would be more appropriate at a rave than on the misty Yorkshire moors, the music is very techno, and there's a wild amount of sex and kink, considering none of that ever happens in the novel. I would like to believe that if Emily Bronte watched this adaptation, she would publicly condemn it but secretly declare this is exactly what she would have written if she had not been constrained by her era. It is way too sexy and over-the-top, but it's a batshit crazy cinematic spectacle that I fell in love with again and again.

February Binges: Agatha Christie's Seven Dials, His & Hers, Ponies

There's been a lot of new TV recently and the weather has been freezing. So I stayed on the couch and got through a lot of binges. Join me, why don't you?

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials: I fell in love with Agatha Christie mystery novels when I was a teenager and have watched many TV and movie adaptations of her work. So naturally I was going to binge this three-episode miniseries to my heart's content. Written by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, like all great British period dramas, this adaptation boasts an all-star cast and some impeccable costume and production design. 

Our main protagonist is Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a young socialite who has fallen on hard times after the death of her father. She and her mother (played by THE Helena Bonham-Carter) have rented out their house to an odious "new money" couple for a house party one weekend. Of course, that's when tragedy strikes, with the death of a man that Bundle was especially close to. The verdict is suicide, but Bundle knows that cannot be right, leading to a murder investigation that will require the sleuthing skills of Superintendent Battle (played by Martin Freeman). 

I have read the book this series was based on, but I must admit I have no recollection of the plot being quite so convoluted. It does appear there were certain additional twists and turns that make it less than a faithful adaptation, but it's certainly a fun one and an excellent way to kill three hours of a dreary afternoon.

His & Hers: Based on the 2020 novel by Alice Feeney, William Oldroyd has developed this adaptation alongside showrunner Dee Johnson, moving the action from England to Georgia and pulling in heavy hitters like Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal to star. Thompson plays Anna Andrews, a local news anchor who disappeared for a year after some tragedy but has now returned and is determined to get her job back. She's been replaced by Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse) but Anna thinks she can prove her skills by working as a field reporter on a recent murder that took place in the town where she grew up. Who is the detective investigating that homicide? Her estranged husband, Jack (Bernthal). 

Turns out Anna also has a connection to the victim, and things just keep getting twistier from there. This is the type of mystery where absolutely everybody is a suspect, and yet, in the final half hour, you'll discover that you were wrong all along. Is it kind of ridiculous? Yes. But was it also the absolute perfect six-episode binge for my friend Laura and I to indulge in while I was over at her house for a grown-up sleepover? You bet!

Ponies: Created by Susanna Fogel and David Iserson, this is a weird and wonderful show set in 1977 Moscow. We follow Bea and Twila (Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson), the wives of two US CIA agents, who mysteriously die while on a mission. The two women are desperate for answers, so they petition the CIA to let them become undercover spies, as the KGB will never suspect the Americans are now using women to do their dirty work. These women have absolutely no experience in spycraft, but they are scrappy and intelligent (Bea went to Wellesley, godammit!), and they are determined to figure out who is responsible for the death of their husbands. So what follows is an elaborate cat-and-mouse game as they cultivate Russian assets and learn to become spies, while reconciling with their own grief and feelings of personal inadequacy. 

In only eight episodes, there are so many twists and turns, but the whole thing ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, so prepare to feel unsatisfied. These actresses are delivering killer performances, and the story is wildly engaging, but the tone also veers all over the place, sometimes feeling extremely serious and dramatic, but oftentimes featuring a lot of comic shtick that can make you wonder if they really even miss their husbands at all. It's an odd but scrappy little show, much like its central protagonists, and while it may be an acquired taste, I'll certainly be tuning in for Season 2.

February Movies Part 1: It Was Just an Accident & The Secret Agent

I am ahead of schedule and have watched the last two Oscar movies on my list. Both were foreign films: one I loved, the other I found to be overhyped and dull. Aren’t you excited to find out which one’s which?!

It Was Just an Accident: Written and directed by Jafar Panahi, this is a brilliant Iranian movie about a man who thinks he has identified his former tormentor from when he was imprisoned by the regime and decides to kidnap and murder him for vengeance. 

Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) runs a garage and spots Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) when he comes in to get his car serviced. Eghbal has a squeaky prosthetic leg, and when Vahid hears that sound, he is immediately triggered, as that was the sound he always heard while he was blindfolded and being tortured for months in an Iranian prison. He follows Eghbal to his house and later to a street where he manages to kidnap him and drive him away to a remote location, where he plans to bury him alive.

I know that everything I have described so far sounds extremely dark and horrific. So let me be the first to say I was shocked by how funny this movie could get. It is the blackest of comedies, and as it progresses, you will find yourself in awe of this deft screenplay that threads such a delicate needle between comedy and despair. I won’t spoil too much, but let’s just say that Vahid starts to experience some doubts about this whole kidnapping and murder scheme and recruits some of his fellow former prisoners to help him sort out what needs to happen next. Which leads to a lot of confusion and anger on their part.

This movie is beautifully acted and quite extraordinary, a wonderful tale of resistance against an oppressive regime that continues to crack down on its people today. The final moments of this film feature a chilling bit of sound design that I would award a special Oscar to all on its own. Of all the foreign films I watched this year, this is the one I admired and loved the most.

The Secret Agent: Written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho, this is a fictional movie set in 1977 during the Brazilian military dictatorship. Wagner Moura plays Armando, a widower who has been targeted as a dissident. He needs to flee the country with his young son and has enlisted the help of an undercover resistance network to smuggle him out of the country. While he waits for forged documents and an opportunity, he has assumed a new identity and is hiding out with other dissidents, desperately hoping to go unnoticed. Separately, we also follow some history students in the present day, who are researching audio recordings that the resistance network made with people like Armando, trying to piece together his story.

I cannot say I understand the hype around this movie at all. Why is it the favorite to win Best Foreign Film, with an additional nomination for Best Picture? Moura is a good actor, but this movie is a dud, plodding along a nearly three-hour runtime with occasional bouts of action, but mostly long stretches of dull exposition or fantastical sequences that left me cold. The soundtrack is rather wonderful, but other than that, there was nothing particularly captivating about this film. Sometimes it feels like critics just decide they’ve suddenly discovered the cinema of a particular country and need to award it. But comparing this movie to last year’s I’m Still Here, a Brazilian movie set in the same time period, I can’t help but see the stark difference in quality and emotion. 

Feel free to watch this movie and tell me I’m wrong, like all the other critics who love this movie so. But my mind continues to be boggled at why anyone thinks this film is more deserving of awards than the other great foreign films that came out this year.

January Movies Part 4: Song Sung Blue & Train Dreams

Every year, when the Oscar nominations are announced, I have to do a mad scramble to catch up on all the movies I missed. Thankfully, this year I watched a good number of films, so I can catch up at a more sedate pace. Here are reviews of two movies I watched this week to get fully informed before the awards ceremony!

Song Sung Blue: Written and directed by Craig Brewer, based on the documentary by Greg Kohs, this is a rather charming biopic about Mike and Claire Sardina (played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson), two musicians who met in 1987 in Wisconsin and decided to work together to create a Neil Diamond tribute act. Now, let's be real, apart from Sweet Caroline, I didn't know any Neil Diamond music, but boy did I get a robust education while watching this movie, including discovering a very bizarre bop called Soolaimon that I still mindlessly hum to myself out of nowhere.

This is a pretty traditional story about two Midwesterners who were battling their own personal demons but had great talent and a great love for each other that helped them overcome their struggles. Jackman and Hudson turn in wonderfully charismatic performances, and considering all the drama that happens to Hudson's character over the course of this movie, it's little wonder she has been nominated for an Oscar. I honestly wasn't expecting to like the movie as much as I did, but it was so sweet, so kind, so understanding of human foibles, that I simply couldn't help myself. I'm a sucker for musicals and stories where music brings people together. There's a little side plot where Mike is trying to get a job at a Thai restaurant, and it turns out the immigrant owner is a huge Neil Diamond fan and loves Soolaimon. That's the kind of cross-cultural human bonding that I simply eat up with a spoon.

Watch this movie if you like great acting, good music, and purely wholesome vibes. It's like watching a Bollywood movie, but the actors are doing their own singing. And it's all true, which makes it all the more spectacular.

Train Dreams: Directed by Client Bentley who co-wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar, adapting it from the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, this is a vibey movie that starts out in the 1890s and tells the story of Robert (Joel Edgerton), a young orphan in Idaho. We watch his life as a young man in the American West, working in forests, helping to build railroads alongside Chinese laborers, and eventually falling in love and building a remote cabin by the river to live in with his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones) and their young daughter. He becomes a logger and has to leave them for months at a time during logging season and we get to watch their struggles to build a life together in this harsh but beautiful New World.

This movie is only 100 minutes long, but we get to see the trajectory of this man's entire life, from sawing down trees in the early 1900s to watching the moon landing in 1969. The movie simultaneously feels extremely slow and deliberate, and then extremely rushed. This is the kind of film that is all about the cinematography and vistas and frankly, might have done better with a 3-hour Brutalist treatment. Instead, we get something that feels a little bit unmoored, much like its protagonist. It's a slice of life, conveying the extraordinary changes that one man can experience in one short lifetime, but did I find that moving or fascinating? Not particularly.

January Movies Part 3: Blue Moon & The Rip

This week I've watched one Oscar-nominated film and one movie that will definitely not be nominated for any Oscars. We call that range!

Blue Moon: Written by Robert Kaplow and directed by Richard Linklater, this is one of those delightful films that you already know has Oscar written all over it once you're ten minutes in. Ethan Hawke stars as Lorenz Hart, half of the famous songwriting duo Rodgers & Hart. However, the action picks up in 1943 when Rodgers has paired up with Oscar Hammerstein to write Oklahoma! instead, tired of working with the alcoholic and temperamental Hart. The entire movie takes place in Sardi's restaurant, during the party to celebrate Oklahoma!'s opening night, and it mostly consists of watching Hart talk to various people like the bartender, Eddie (Bobby Canavale), E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy) who also happens to be at Sardi's, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), who wants to resume their working relationship but only if Hart can promise to be sober and dependable and stop mocking the Americana naivete of Oklahoma!, and Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), a 20-year-old college student that Hart claims to be in love with, despite everyone thinking his tendencies lie elsewhere. And there's the sergeant piano player, Morty (Jonah Lees), constantly in the background, tickling those ivories and treating us to all the incredible standards that Rodgers & Hart brought into our lives.

The most apt comparison I can come up with is the Before Sunrise trilogy, also directed by Linklater and starring Hawke, that all take place in one day and where you learn all about your protagonists from the art of conversation. In this film, Hawke delivers a tour-de-force performance as the funny, sarcastic, bitter, yet hopeful Hart, who is annoyed that Rodgers has moved on to a new partner, but confident they can team up together again for more greatness. And Kaplow's screenplay has so many pithy one-liners that my husband and I kept quoting at each other that it's no wonder he and Hawke are both nominated for Oscars this year. As audience members, we know that Hart is going to die less than a year after this night, but this movie is only concerned with this one night, making it both melancholy and captivating in equal measure. Like one of the songs Hart wrote, as you watch this movie, you may find yourself bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

The Rip: There's a reason this movie is on Netflix. Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, this is a police thriller about a team of cops on the Tactical Narcotics Team of the Miami-Dade Police Department and what happens when their captain, Jackie Velez, is shot and killed and no one knows who did it. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star as Dane and JD, members of the team who are determined to figure out who killed Jackie. Right before she died, she texted Dane with the address of a stash house with a huge amount of money. So Dane decides to raid the house, but also use this raid as an opportunity to flush out a potential cop killer. What could possibly go wrong?

Teyana Taylor, Steven Yuen, Catalina Sandino Morena, and Sasha Calle round out the cast, so you can't complain about the acting, but boy is this script weak. If you're the sort of person who likes to yell out what they think is going to happen next, this is precisely the movie for you, because that's what I found myself doing for much of this film. It's very twisty, but very predictable, with one piece of casting that immediately told me who the bad guy would be. The final act also features a lot of unnecessary action that could have done with some judicious editing - if this movie had been a tight 90 minutes, I probably wouldn't have minded as much, but it is slightly too bloated to just be a fun action romp. If you want to laze on the couch and watch Ben and Matt reunite, go for it, but if you're expecting quality filmmaking, you're out of luck.