If you don't want to step into a theater and are looking for a streaming binge, perhaps one of these movies is for you. One is a raucous comedy about two sisters trying to make some money off a quiz show, while the other is a speculative romantic drama about a world in which couples can take a test to find out whether or not they are in love. So yeah. It's a broad range.
Quiz Lady: Awkwafina and Sandra Oh play two sisters (what more do you need!), Anne and Jenny, who had a difficult childhood with their tumultuous parents, who eventually got divorced. Jenny left to become an actress, but Anne is the responsible one who stayed behind in the family home while their mother moved to a nursing home. Unfortunately, now their mother has escaped the home and jetted off to Macao with a new boyfriend, leaving behind a mountain of gambling debts that Anne must now pay off. When Jenny arrives to help out with the situation, she puts a plan into motion that eventually culminates in Anne having to consider participating in Can't Stop the Quiz, a quiz show that she has obsessively been watching since she was a child.
Written by Jen D'Angelo and directed by Jessica Yu, this movie features little moments that touch you and big moments that make you chortle. Will Ferrell is fun as the game show's host, a nice nod to his years playing Alex Trebek on Saturday Night Live. Jason Schwartzman also shows up as a smarmy contestant who has amassed a winning streak on the show and that Anne will have to take down. But at the heart of it all is the relationship between these two sisters and the various misunderstandings that have torn them apart. These two actresses do fine work here, and it is genuinely heartwarming to watch their journey. So give it a chance - this is a movie that could surprise you in unexpected ways.
Fingernails: Directed by Christos Nikou, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Stavros Raptis and Sam Steiner, this movie is mostly vibes, based off a tantalizing central premise. As you know, though, I am a plot person, and I do have to say there wasn't enough plot to sustain this film's two-hour runtime. But still, some of the vibes were worth it, given the cast you have assembled here. Jessie Buckley and Jeremy Allen White play Anna and Ryan, a couple that have taken the "test" that proves they are both in love with each other and meant to be together. However, Anna then starts working at the Love Institute, a place that serves as a quick bootcamp for couples where they do exercises designed to strengthen their bond and heighten the love they feel for each other before they take their test. It's clear that Anna feels like her relationship with Ryan needs some work and she tries to surreptitiously trick him into doing some of these love exercises at home with her (he has no idea that this is where she works, which maybe tells you already that this relationship is in trouble).
But the added wrinkle is that her colleague at the institute is Amir (Riz Ahmed), and of course, the two of them start vibing right away. I won't spoil the story any further (there isn't that much to spoil after all), but let's just say that this is your typical work of speculative fiction, a treatise on free will vs determinism and whether you can really just have a test tell you you're in love and then plan your whole life around that certainty. It's certainly a novel idea, reasonably well executed, but it doesn't...nail the landing, if you will. And if you're wondering why the movie is called Fingernails, it's for reasons I refuse to get into, so that can be the one truly surprising thing you get out of watching this film.
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