July Binges: Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed & Nemesis

This month I have binged two very different but rather entertaining shows, both of which end on a cliffhanger that promises much more hijinks for a second season. Ready to add yet more shows to your schedule? Follow me!

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed: Created by David J. Rosen, this show stars Tatiana Maslany as Paula, a divorced woman in Queens who is going through a messy custody battle with her annoying and hapless husband, Karl (Jake Johnson). She's fighting to get a promotion at work, she's fighting to retain custody of her daughter, so amidst all that stress, the lady naturally decides to have a few online sessions with a camboy named Trevor (Brandon Flynn) to relieve some of that tension. 

Unfortunately, Trevor then gets violently attacked during one of their sessions. Paula records it all on video and reports it to the police (specifically to a detective played by Dolly de Leon, an actress I have loved since I first saw her in Triangle of Sadness, and who continues to be excellent here) and is told that it is probably all just part of a scam. When Paula gets a call demanding money, or else Trevor will be killed, she is mad that she did fall victim to such an obvious scam. But then...turns out Trevor IS dead. So what's going on?

For ten episodes, you're in for a twisty treat, where more and more shadowy characters come into play and the conspiracy around this whole nightmare keeps spiraling into oblivion. In the meantime, she still has to keep up appearances at work and with the other soccer moms. Maslany is an incredible actress and her ability to portray a woman who is holding on by her fingernails as she investigates criminals, coaches kids' soccer, battles with her ex, and dodges murderers is brilliant to behold. And lest I forget, this is a very funny show. It's not all just thrills and murder, so you'll have a nice chuckle as you get swept along for the ride. It's well worth your time, and given how everything ends, it's going to be well worth your time for Season 2.

Nemesis: Created by Courtney A. Kemp and Tani Marole, this is a very twisty cops-and-robbers show about a criminal mastermind named Coltrane Wilder (Y'lan Noel) and LAPD Lieutenant, Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law), who is determined to arrest Coltrane and put his small gang of co-conspirators behind bars once and for all. Isaiah has been tracking Coltrane's crimes for a few years, convinced that there is one small group of four criminals who have been orchestrating incredible heists in the LA area that all seem unrelated. His boss and partner all think he's crazy, but he knows he's right, and he also has a personal vendetta against them to up the stakes.

There's also a lot of family drama that both men are experiencing with their wives. Coltrane's wife, Ebony (Cleopatra Coleman), recently had a miscarriage and no longer wants to help out with any of his heists, even though her sister is the woman who comes up with these jobs for him and his gang to execute in the first place (yeah, it's really a family affair). In the meantime, Candice (Gabrielle Dennis), is very frustrated with Isaiah's obsessive devotion to his job instead of showing up to his son's basketball games and is seriously contemplating a divorce. And oh yeah, somehow these two women know each other socially and become friends. That's not going to complicate matters at all, right?

It's all very tangled and delicious. It's also a very Black show, so your mileage may vary if you have opinions on how often you want to hear the n-word deployed. Also, the white characters who show up to play cops might be the most hilariously stereotypical white actors I've seen in a while. The whole thing reminded me a bit of a Bollywood movie - a little larger than life, a little too much emotion, but damn if I wasn't thoroughly entertained for eight episodes. If you're looking for something engaging and slightly ridiculous to while away the hours, you may have found your next binge!

April Binges Part 1: Bait & Taskaree

Haven't been watching enough TV about South Asians? Well, here I am with two VERY different miniseries. One is a British comedy-drama about the pressure of representing the South Asian community (and particularly Muslims) in the UK, while the other is a classic Bollywood action-drama about the customs officers at Mumbai's International Airport. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Bait: Created by and starring Riz Ahmed, this is the story of a struggling British actor named Shahjehan "Shah" Latif (Ahmed), who is auditioning to be the next James Bond. Obviously, this role comes with a lot of meaning - Bond is considered a quintessentially British role, that has hitherto only been played by white male actors. Naturally, it would be a coup for Shah, a British Pakistani Muslim, to get this role. But the significance of it leads him into a spiral of self-sabotage. We are also introduced to his family, consisting of a doting mother, Tahira (Sheeba Chaddha), jokey father, Parvez (Sajid Hasan), and two cousins who were raised with him, Zulfi (Guz Khan) and Q (Asiya Shah). 

This is a short and sharp show, only six episodes, under thirty minutes long, so I don't want to get into much detail. You have to let the wildness of the show unfold for yourself, but suffice to say, it does a brilliant job of capturing the South Asian immigrant experience, the particular nastiness of the racism faced by South Asians in Britain (be prepared for the P-word to be deployed a lot), and the difficulties of straddling both your brown community and the white one you're trying to integrate into. 

All of the scenes with Shah's family felt like something that could have been filmed during any of my family gatherings (well, with slightly less drama and destruction, of course), and at the center of it all, we have Riz Ahmed, with those big, expressive eyes, conveying a world of hurt, humiliation, and confusion as he tries to navigate this very weird situation he has been put into. The show was not as funny as I wanted it to be, but it was certainly a chaotically good time and a wonderful addition into the TV genre of layered South Asian representation. If you're looking for something fresh and new, this is exactly what you seek.

Taskaree: Are you looking for layers? Then move right along. With this show, created by Neeraj Pandey, you're going to get a rather typical Bollywood masala action romp, with a little dash of romance and plenty of police brutality. This show thoroughly lacks any nuance, but it's still a very fun ride with plenty of twists and turns, so you will have a good time, as long as you turn your brain off first. 

Emraan Hashmi plays Arjun Meena, a customs officer in Mumbai's International Airport who has a reputation for taking his job seriously and being incorruptible in a profession that is otherwise well known to be full of people who are willing to look the other way if offered a nice little bribe. When a new commissioner, Prakash Kumar (Anurag Sinha) is brought in to crack down on all the international smuggling that goes through the airport, Arjun and his most trusted colleagues are brought together on a task force to help bring down a criminal syndicate headed by Bada Choudhary (Sharad Kelkar). Bada has couriers operating out of Al Dera (for some reason, a fictional city that is just a stand-in for the UAE), Ethiopia, and Milan, so what follows is a very international escapade told with a great deal of Bollywood flair. 

The story is fast-paced, every episode ends with an amazing cliffhanger, and as long as you suspend your disbelief at points, you are promised a great time. It's only seven episodes long and makes for a quick and dirty binge, so settle down on your couch. Also, your Hindi vocabulary is really going to expand as you learn more about smuggling terminology and the layers of Indian intelligence bureaucracy than you could have ever expected. So, it's fun AND educational!

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 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.

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.

December Movies Part 3: Zootopia 2, Wake Up Dead Man, The Housemaid

Looking for something to watch over Christmas break? Well, I've got an animated romp, a twisty whodunit, and a sexy thriller to please all demographics!

Zootopia 2: What's not to love about this movie? The original was a great ride and this one, written by Jared Bush, who also co-directed with Byron Howard, continues the fun, with a pro-immigration, pro-diversity stance that the current US administration is sure to hate. What could be better! Our dynamic duo of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, a bunny and a fox voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman, are now officially rookie cops in the Zootopia Police Department and they are desperately trying to prove they aren't more than one-hit wonders. But of course, they are overeager and keep messing up big cases. The plot revolves around a snake who sabotages a gala event, except...is the snake actually the bad guy? Turns out maybe there has been some misinformation circulating in Zootopia.

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, I loved all the fun little sight gags and puns (like the state of Gnu Jersey making an appearance), and the animation continues to be beautiful, with every shot of Judy Hopps making me want to reach out and pet that soft l'il bunny. It's high-quality entertainment for all ages, and this adult did not feel remotely bored during this purported kids movie, so give it a shot! It's Christmas, be merry!

Wake Up Dead Man: Fine, you don't want to be merry? Well then prepare to feel like you've fallen into the pages of a new Agatha Christie novel because writer-director Rian Johnson's latest installment in his Knives Out series is a devious little locked room mystery that is perfectly plotted and executed. Josh O'Connor plays Jud Duplenticy, the new priest at a rural church in upstate New York. When the old priest, Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), dies in the middle of a service, Jud seems like the only possible suspect. But of course, our friend Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) aka Foghorn Leghorn, is helping the police and he thinks Jud is far too earnest to have committed this crime. 

This is a movie that involves many heated discussions of religion, with the young priest going toe-to-toe with the deeply atheist Blanc, and it also involves many examples of what it means to be morally good while having no faith and then morally bankrupt while professing to be the most faithful person of all. The supporting cast is a murderer's row (pun intended) including Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Thomas Haden Church, and Daryl McCormack, and they all put in excellent work, with red herrings and misdirects galore to throw you off the scent or lead you tantalizingly close to the solution. My husband and I had a grand ol' time pausing this movie at intervals while we theorized over motives and opportunity, and we almost got it right, but not quite. Which is the genius of this film - there are more than enough clues to help you solve the puzzle, but at the end of the day, you just can't be as smart as Benoit Blanc. Bah humbug.

The Housemaid: I loved the 2022 novel by Freida McFadden, so when I saw director Paul Feig was adapting this movie from a screenplay by Rebecca Sonnenshine, I was all for it. Starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (excellent casting since they look very similar, which becomes increasingly important as the movie goes on), I was expecting A Simple Favor vibes and it certainly did not disappoint. There's no point in giving away any of the plot because it is very twisty and fun and Seyfried in particular seems to be having a fantastic time as a psychotic rich woman who seems determined to make her maid's life very, very difficult, while her patient husband (played by Brandon Sklenar) attends to her every whim and tries to keep the peace at home.

I imagine this movie would go down well with anyone who has no idea of the plot - reading the novel was a very satisfying experience, and watching the movie will be too. Since I already knew everything that was going to happen, I found myself focusing more on the filmmaking, and while I enjoyed Seyfried's performance, I found Sweeney to be a little lackluster. You will get to see a lot of her in this movie though, if that's something that floats your boat. I also appreciated all the shots of Sklenar's hands. Feig captures his physicality excellently in this movie which makes for good thrills as we get to the finale. This movie does get unexpectedly gory at times in a way I didn't totally appreciate, so be warned if you can't stand any body horror. But otherwise, this is a solid, fun thriller that is a good adaptation of a solid, fun book.

December Binges Part 1: All Her Fault, Mr. Scorsese, Down Cemetery Road

I have binged many shows this month, and the last two weeks of the year are prime couch potato season, so here are some recommendations. Plop down with the remote and get ready!

All Her Fault: What a terrifically weird show. Created by Megan Gallagher, based on the novel by Andrea Mara, the show stars Sarah Snook as Marissa, a woman who shows up to a strange woman's house one day, assuming that this is where her son went for a play date. Turns out, the boy is not there, and what follows is her worst nightmare as the police have to treat this as a kidnapping case and have no idea where her son might be. Dakota Fanning plays Jenny, a mom whose son attends the same school as Marissa's son, and when she discovers her nanny might be involved in the kidnapping, she is overcome with guilt and wants to help Marissa in any way she can. Meanwhile, Marissa's husband, Peter (Jake Lacy), is the typical straight husband, a man who thinks parenting has been Marissa's responsibility all along, and therefore everything that is now going wrong is...all her fault.

This show makes for a great drinking game. Just drink anytime a woman is annoyed at a man. Shots when someone literally goes "this is all my/your fault!" No spoilers, but my absolute favorite part of watching this show was in the final episode when a character literally screamed, "It was not my fault...it was YOUR fault!" This is not a good show, and yet I was genuinely surprised by twists and turns in the final episodes that finally brought every character's motivation to light. If you want a soapy, silly drama to while away the day, this is absolutely the show for you. But expect to be giggling a lot while you watch.

Mr. Scorsese: Are you a fan of Martin Scorsese? Then director Rebecca Miller has put together a 5-part documentary miniseries just for you. Chronicling the man's asthmatic childhood that led to him playing indoors a lot and thereby becoming enamored of filmmaking, to his exposure to the Italian mobsters in NYC that led to his many movies about them, as well as a certain bravery when it came to negotiating with studio heads. Watching this miniseries made me realize that I have no knowledge of early Scorsese movies - it was only in the fifth and final episode, when we get into his long collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, that I started nodding my head along. Of course, I've heard of all those early films, but gangster movies have never been my genre. And yet, I was fascinated all the same.

The series is an incisive portrait of a celebrated filmmaker, and it has a lot of access to people who knew him well and could speak candidly about all of his struggles as well as his incredible successes. His three daughters get to chime in about the extremely different fathers they had when growing up - his older daughters were used to never seeing him as he was too busy on set, while by the time he got around to having his youngest as an older man, he certainly made much more of an effort to be a family man. Miller is also keen to interrogate if Scorsese has a woman problem - Sharon Stone speaks about her experience struggling to get time with him in Casino, while Margot Robbie seems to have had a very collaborative time with him in The Wolf of Wall Street. This is a great series for any cinephile but also if you're just curious to go behind the scenes of some iconic and memorable movies and understand all the drama that was brewing beneath the surface. Merry Christmas!

Down Cemetery Road: Created by Morwenna Banks and based on the novel by Mick Herron, this show stars Emma Thompson as Zoe Boehm, a woman who teams up with Sarah Trafford (Ruth Wilson), after an unexpected gas explosion in Sarah's neighborhood kills a family and leads to a missing child. I won't give away more details than that, because this is one of those twisty mysteries where every single episode ends in a frantic cliffhanger where you suddenly suspect all the lead actors have died and you might have been following the wrong story all along. There's a very elaborate government conspiracy that starts coming apart at the seams, and it's all very British and dry.

Fans of Slow Horses (another Mick Herron series) would probably eat this show up with a spoon, but much like that show, I found myself unable to sustain my interest. The trouble is that the show is rather densely plotted, and in this day and age, unless I can binge it, I find myself flummoxed by watching week to week and completely forgetting everything by the time the next seven days roll around. There's also something about Herron's plots, where everything is always a little bit shadowy and high-stakes. I prefer an Agatha Christie-esque plot where humans have personal motivations for their evil deeds, as opposed to whole government agencies getting involved in criminal activity. But again, you do get to watch Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson be a kick-ass duo, so that's worth the effort. Right?

November Movies Part 2: The Running Man, Die My Love, Wicked: For Good

There are a lot of movies to watch this month so let's dive right into two blockbusters and some arthouse cinema!

The Running Man: This film was directed by Edgar Wright, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Bacall (adapting Stephen King's 1982 novel, which already had a film adaptation in 1982, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which I have not seen, so this review will not help you with any comparisons). This is classic dystopian fiction about a man who is forced into a brutal game for the entertainment of the masses while he is just trying to win a fortune so his family can live a healthy and comfortable life. In this case, the man is Ben Richards (played by the charming as ever Glen Powell), a troublemaker who is always chafing against the restrictions placed by his capitalist corporate overlords, and who is therefore blacklisted from various jobs and struggling to make ends meet. In desperation, he applies to be on The Running Man, a TV show where contestants must try to hide and evade public capture for 30 days, winning money for every single day they are successful. But of course, no one has ever made it all the way to 30 days. Will Ben be the first to succeed?!

There are a lot of parallels to The Hunger Games, with Josh Brolin playing the evil executive who runs the TV network and is all about manipulating this show to garner huge audience ratings, i.e. President Snow; while Colman Domingo is having a whale of a time as the host of the show, giving it his best Caesar Flickerman energy. But overall, this movie is a bit of a disappointment. Yes, there are some good action sequences and fun chases, and the production design by Marcus Rowland is grand, but it certainly starts to overstay its welcome and has a very weird tone throughout. It's occasionally trying to be a comedy, but then the subject matter is quite dark and earnest, and I don't think Powell quite figures out how to make his performance work. He does get quite unclothed in one scene though, so I guess the studio executives figured that would be enough to satisfy audiences. This is not a great movie, but if you enjoy dystopian action, this is certainly not the worst way to spend your afternoon.

Die My Love: Directed by Lynne Ramsay, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Edna Walsh and Alice Birch, this is a wild movie about a couple, Jackson and Grace (Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence), who move from New York to a rural home in Montana and have a baby. And then Grace absolutely loses her shit, presumably in post-partum psychosis, but also maybe just from living a life of seclusion with only Jackson's family for company.

I have just read the Wikipedia plot summary of this film in preparation for this review and now have a better handle on what it was I actually watched for two hours. If it's not clear yet, I did NOT like this movie. It is supremely vibey, with the vibes being, having a baby and an absent partner and living in the middle of Montana makes life hard, which...duh. Lawrence spends the entirety of this film either being horny, angry, naked, or inflicting grave bodily injury upon herself, which is not a particularly fun experience after the first hour. Lakeith Stanfield is also in this movie, very briefly, and I honestly cannot tell you what the point of his character was. This is definitely a gorgeous movie that is shot beautifully and has very interesting and unsettling set pieces. But was I interested in the story at any point? Nope. 

Wicked: For Good: Director Jon M. Chu is back with the long-awaited sequel of last year's Wicked: Part 1. And as expected, it's not as good as the first movie, as the musical's first act is famously much stronger than the second. So, if you go into it with those mediocre expectations, you should be in for a perfectly good time. Honestly, you could just read my review of the first movie and apply that here - I was still stunned by the production design, and those costumes continue to bewitch me body and soul. But boy is the music lacking in this installment. There's a reason it's subtitled "For Good" - that song is honestly the only one that sticks in my memory from the entire movie.

Of course, the acting continues to be top notch, and we get to see Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo really sink their teeth into these characters and bring out all their complexities, particularly Galinda who is walking an insane tightrope of being complicit with the evil Wizard and Madame Morrible, and trying to justify all her actions despite the continual danger they bring to her best friend. Jonathan Bailey, newly crowned as People's Sexiest Man Alive, certainly lives up to the moniker in this installment, basically swanning around as Anthony Bridgerton and being perfectly swoon-worthy. Overall, this is a satisfying movie and a worthy kick-off to the onslaught of holiday blockbusters. It's the most wonderful time of the year!

November Movies Part 1: Dead of Winter, Bugonia, Frankenstein

Alright, the theaters and streaming services are filling up with new movies and I'm on a quest to watch them all. Ready to join me?!

Dead of Winter: Written by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb and directed by Brian Kirk, this is an icy and compelling story about Barb, a widow in Minnesota (played by Emma Thompson, doing her best Marge Gunderson impression) who is travelling to a remote lake in the middle of a snowstorm. Along the way, she stumbles across a kidnapping and now must attempt to rescue the young woman who has been kidnapped. And of course, she has no cell service and there aren't any people around, so she's going to have to get creative.

I would watch anything Thompson is in, and she unsurprisingly delivers a powerhouse performance as this innovative and courageous woman. Throughout the film we also get flashbacks of her younger self falling in love with her husband and the two of them building their life together, which makes for a very bittersweet narrative. I won't go into much more detail about the kidnapping, but let's just say that this film also stars Judy Greer in a particularly villainous turn, which is finally an appropriate use of Judy Greer as a proper co-star in a movie, and not just playing a supportive best friend or weepy mom. This is a taut, spare, and thrilling movie, with many compelling twists and turns, and it's the perfect treat if you're looking for more women-centered pictures that pack a bit of a punch.

Bugonia: Written by Will Tracy (who based it on a Korean movie by Jang Joon-hwan named Save the Green Planet!) and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, this is a wonderfully weird and creepy movie about a man named Teddy (Jesse Plemons), who convinces his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) to help him kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the wealthy CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Why is he kidnapping her? Because he is certain that she is actually an Andromedan, an alien masquerading as a human who is manipulating the entire human race to do the bidding of her alien race and consequently ruining human existence.

The premise may be absurd, but oh boy, none of the sentiment will feel out of the ordinary to you. This movie hits deep about how people get radicalized on the Internet, delving deep into conspiracy theories, and then attack the powerful in a bid to right socioeconomic wrongs. Stone delivers a brilliant performance here, initially thoroughly confused by these wild accusations, then attempting to placate this troubled man, and finally calling the shots and masterfully manipulating him in a desperate bid to escape. The movie mostly consists of Plemons and Stone talking at each other and it's an acting masterclass that crawls under your skin and leaves you wanting more. Of course, this is still a movie directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, so if this is your first time watching his work, please expect it to take some...unexpected turns. This movie further confirms that I prefer his work when he's a director but not the writer, because as weird as this movie might be, it's not as weird as it would be if Lanthimos were penning the script himself. And that's really saying something.

Frankenstein: Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, this is a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, with Oscar Isaac playing the titular doctor, and an unrecognizable Jacob Elordi playing his creation. Many years ago, I watched the National Theater's production of Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternating the roles of Frankenstein and the Creature on different nights, and this movie felt very similar to that stage play. Except, of course, it is so much more epic in its vast scope and cinematography. Production designer Tamara Deverell and costume designer Kate Hawley had better be getting nominations on Oscar night, if not outright taking the statuettes home, because this is one of the most stunning movies I have seen in a long time. The gothic vibe reminded me a great deal of Crimson Peak, another drop-dead gorgeous del Toro movie, starring a different woman named Mia (in this movie, Mia Goth plays Elizabeth, the unfortunate woman who is going to get tangled up in Frankenstein's machinations).

This movie is two and half hours long and your mileage may vary if you are expecting something innovative story-wise. Del Toro is not interested in any reinterpretations or twists here - this is a classic story and he's going to tell it classically. I, for one, was completely on board from start to finish. Elordi delivers an incredible physical performance as the Creature initially stumbles into life and then has to contend with the fact that he might never die. Isaac is perfect as the crazed doctor, obsessed with proving his brilliance but lacking any ounce of empathy to actually do any good once he brings his Creature to life. And Mia Goth is a classic gothic heroine, virginal but intelligent and fascinated by the Creature, and bringing a little lust into the proceedings. But the British accents by all these non-British actors are a little iffy, so be warned if that's a pet peeve. Otherwise, no notes. I think Mary Shelley would be proud.

October Movies Part 2: The Smashing Machine, Roofman, The Woman in Cabin 10

Another week, another slew of movies in theaters and on streaming to dive into. Huzzah!

The Smashing Machine: Written and directed by Benny Safdie, this is a biography of the wrestler and MMA fighter, Mark Kerr (played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who doesn't have to stretch his acting chops too much here, but still does a fine job). Starting in 1999, the movie chronicles his struggles with opioid addiction, his challenging relationship with girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt, who seems destined for a Supporting Actress nomination), and his long friendship with Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), a man he has known since they were both on the college wrestling circuit and now they compete together in UFC. Most of the action centers around a Japanese Pride Fighting League Championship and we watch as Mark ruins his initial chances in this league, but then stages a comeback after going to rehab.

I was invested in this movie from start to finish. What can I say, I'm a sucker for any sports movie. The fights are choreographed beautifully, capturing all the brutality and intricacy of the sport, and I was cringing in my seat with every punch and kick, assuming that at any moment, Mark was going to get a life-threatening injury. The score by Nala Sinephro is jangly and unsettling, which heightens your sense throughout the movie that something abjectly awful is about to transpire at any moment. 

I knew nothing about Mark Kerr prior to watching this movie, so I thought this was a wonderful biopic, well-acted and well-told, and keeping me completely absorbed for two hours.  Folks who know more about Kerr would presumably not be as surprised as I was by every turn of events in this film, but this is still a fine example of filmmaking and a fairly moving story about a man who was always nice to everyone around him (to the point where he eventually does need to learn to exercise some boundaries), and fought his demons both on and off the ring.

Roofman: Directed by Derek Cianfrance, who also co-wrote the script with Kirt Gunn, this is another true story about Jeffrey Manchester (played to charming perfection by Channing Tatum), a divorced US Army veteran who is struggling to re-integrate into society and earn enough money to provide for his three young children. He has keen powers of observation and decides that the only solution to his problems is to start robbing local stores by breaking in through the roof at night, holding up the employees in the morning, getting them to open up the safe and give him all the money, and then making a run for it. He does this for two years, earns the nickname "Roofman," but eventually is caught. However, he then escapes from prison and ends up hiding in a Toys "R" Us as he figures out his next steps. Which is where the majority of this movie takes place.

Kirsten Dunst plays a Toys "R" Us employee, Leigh, who becomes the object of Jeffrey's affections. I won't get into how that could even happen when the man is a fugitive, but let's just say it's all very inventive and amazing, and all the more insane for being a true story. This man is so effortlessly charming and wonderful, and the entire movie is just a light romantic comedy that has an undertone of sadness because you know that the good times simply cannot continue in the way that they are going.

I only knew this was a Tatum movie and had completely missed that Cianfrance was the director. This movie is not remotely as devastating as his other films, but it certainly has its melancholy beats accompanied by a beautiful score by Christopher Bear. It's a sweet, quiet, lovely little tale, and I found myself thoroughly invested in these characters for two hours. Now I need to go read up more about the Roofman.

The Woman in Cabin 10: This movie is based on a book by Ruth Ware, and I devoured the novel when I read it a few months ago. Unfortunately, the movie slightly pales in comparison. Directed by Simon Stone who adapted the screenplay with Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, the movie stars Keira Knightley as Laura "Lo" Blacklock, an investigative journalist who needs a break from reporting intense stories and decides to do a bit of a fluff piece that would involve a trip on a billionaire's luxury superyacht. What could go wrong?

Well, as you can imagine, a lot goes wrong. Lo wakes up in the middle of the night after hearing a disturbance in the cabin next to hers (Cabin 10, of course), and when she goes out onto the balcony, she sees someone fall overboard. She raises the alarm, but the crew confirm that everyone is accounted for on board, and that no one was ever staying in Cabin 10. We then get a twisty psychological thriller about everyone gaslighting Lo while she tries to prove that she did in fact see someone in that cabin and that something is deeply wrong.

This plot works great as a book, but I think the film treatment exposes some of the rather ludicrous elements of the story. The film also gets a bit rushed and chaotic towards the end, unlike the novel that has an opportunity to keep ratcheting up the tension and make us root for our intrepid heroine. This movie is certainly an acquired taste, but it's also a perfectly adequate Netflix afternoon movie. So, if you're lazing around and want something mildly diverting, you certainly could do a lot worse.

October Movies Part 1: One Battle After Another; The Lost Bus; Sorry, Baby

October is off to a good start with two excellent movies on streaming and one predictably overhyped movie in theaters. Let's discuss!

One Battle After Another: I very begrudgingly walk into the theater any time I have to go watch a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. So you will not be surprised to hear that this film, written and directed by him, did not manage to make me gasp in awe like most critics who are always quick to fawn over his work. It's inspired by the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, so you've got a white male auteur adapting another white male auteur and it's all very sigh-inducing. However, this movie does have a lot of plot, and isn't just heavily vibes-based, so I did appreciate that. 

The movie opens with Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor playing Pat and Perfidia, members of a far-left terrorist group who try to break out immigrants from detention centers and attack people and organizations they disagree with. Which certainly has a lot of parallels to the current state of affairs in the United States where every liberal seems poised to get militant to defend their rights. Perfidia gets pregnant, has the baby, but has no interest in being a mother when her life has been devoted to the revolution. When she is caught on a job, she makes a deal for witness protection, naming other members of the group who all have to flee for their lives, including Pat and his baby daughter. The action then picks up 16 years later, with Chase Infiniti playing Pat's long-suffering teenage daughter, who thinks her father is insanely paranoid and is just trying to live her best life. But they are in for some trouble because a far-right colonel named Steven J. Lockjaw (nothing subtle about that name, and nothing subtle about this performance by Sean Penn), is coming for them. He was sexually obsessed with Perfidia back in the day, but now has to show his allegiance to a KKK-style group he has become allied with, and it's all very icky and insane. 

Predictably, I enjoyed the performances of all the Black women in this movie (Chase Infiniti in particular is an absolute STAR and I'm excited to see what she does next in her career), and then was thoroughly fed up of Penn and DiCaprio. I understand that I am supposed to hate the Lockjaw character, but I have to say, it did not feel like much of a stretch for Penn to portray this rage-filled lunatic with insane ideas. Meanwhile, Pat is constantly getting high and self-pitying, which feels thoroughly pointless if you think you're in danger and should be protecting your daughter, but you know, that's how fathers operate. Overall, I would say the plot is fine, the characters are blah, but the actual filmmaking is compelling. The score by Jonny Greenwood is yet another masterpiece, with a lot of chaotic piano in tense chase scenes that kept me on the edge of my seat. And Michael Bauman's cinematography in the climactic car chase on some rolling hills is epic and destined to make this an iconic cinematic moment. I was not happy to watch this movie, and found it overlong and underwhelming, but I cannot deny that it did manage to have moments of brilliance throughout. If only it could have been edited down to only feature those moments and separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Lost Bus: This movie was directed by Paul Greengrass, from a screenplay he wrote with Brad Ingelsby, based on a section of the non-fiction book, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson. It takes place during the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California's history, and specifically focuses on the true story of a bus driver named Kevin McKay who had to navigate a school bus of 22 elementary school children through the wildfire and drive them to safety. In real life, there were two teachers on board, but in the movie we only get one, Mary Ludwig, as the other teacher did not wish to be portrayed.

Matthew McConnaughey and America Ferrera play Kevin and Mary and it is miraculous to watch these two wonderful actors work together over the course of this film. These two strangers are thrust together in an absolutely horrendous situation, and their ability to join forces, calm each other down, and most importantly, calm these children down as they fight for their lives, is absolutely heroic. But the real star of this film is the direction by Paul Greengrass. His documentary style is in full force here, with close-up shots of his excellent actors that capture every look of fear and panic, and sweeping shots of this fire that is raging through the land with absolutely no intention of sparing the humans along its path. 

There is only one word to describe this movie: harrowing. The shots of the fire and how quickly it spreads are panic-inducing, and watching seasoned firefighters battle against Mother Nature and eventually just give up is painful. It is such a shame this movie had a limited theatrical release and is now just on Apple TV+ because this was meant to be seen in a theater. But considering my reaction to the film when watching it at home, perhaps it's best I didn't have a more immersive experience. At one point I simply burst out crying because I couldn't believe what these people were going through. Living on the East Coast, it's so easy to become inured to hearing stories of wildfires in California, and understanding their horror in the abstract without needing to get into the details. Well, this movie will certainly introduce you to the visceral details. I thought this would be a corny Hollywood "based on a true story" movie, but it's a truly moving piece of cinema that introduces us to some heroic figures and reminds us of how much damage is being done in California every time another one of those fires gets out of control.

Sorry, Baby: After watching those sweeping epics, you may want to settle in for this quiet and yet nonetheless powerful movie written and directed by Eva Victor, who also stars in it (triple threat!). Victor plays Agnes, an English professor at a liberal arts college in the wilds of New England. The movie opens with a visit from her best friend, Lydie (the marvelous Naomi Ackie), and the two of them have a wonderful time together, marred only by an awkward dinner with some of their friends from graduate school. As Lydie and Agnes talk, you get the sense that Lydie is worried about Agnes, wondering why she still lives in the same house and works at the same school they graduated from, and overall seems to have a somewhat subdued and stagnant life. But Agnes reassures her that all is well.

The movie follows as a series of vignettes that flash back in time to gradually give us the story of what happened to Agnes in graduate school and how she has subsequently been dealing with the fallout during The Year of the Bad Thing. Be warned, it involves sexual assault, but this movie deals with the topic in such an incredibly nuanced and heartbreakingly funny way. It highlights the thoroughly useless response most of society has when you have to report a sexual assault or actually hold anyone accountable for it, whether it's the doctor that Agnes goes to see or the college administrators she makes a report to. Of course, Lydie is by Agnes's side throughout, and this movie is the ultimate ode to female friendship, showcasing how female friends can have a relationship that far transcends the paltry realm of romantic love. 

The dialogue is spare and direct, and most of the joy of this film is in watching expressions flit over Agnes's face as she struggles to figure out what would be the right thing to say or how she should feel in any given situation. It's such a remarkable and singular performance. The final monologue she delivers at the end of the movie serves as a distillation of the entire human condition and is so profound that it makes me want to cry just thinking about it. Everyone should watch this movie, watch that final monologue, and come away with a renewed understanding of their role in humanity. I can't wait to see what Eva Victor does next.

August Movies Part 3: Highest 2 Lowest, The Roses, Honey Don't!

Well, I ended August by watching two great movies, and one...not so great. Let's discuss!

Highest 2 Lowest: It has been established that I am a real sucker for films shot in New York City. Well, director Spike Lee has delivered another homage to the city that is a wild and crazy ride that I enjoyed from start to finish. Written by Alan Fox and serving as an adaptation/re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film High and Low, this is a twisty film about what happens when David King (Denzel Washington), an immensely rich and successful music executive, has to deal with a ransom request from kidnappers who have taken his son. What follows is a tense, but also extremely funny and frantic film about how rich people treat others, ambition and pride, and overall, the pursuit of Black excellence. The cast is brimming with great actors, and while the dialogue can sometimes be a bit silly and clunky like you're watching a play, there's nothing clunky about Lee's filmmaking prowess. It's so flamboyant and emphatic, and I soaked it all up like a delighted sponge.

It makes sense that for a movie about a music executive, the thing that delighted me most about the film was its soundtrack and the score by Howard Drossin. The opening of this extremely New York film is set to "Oh what a beautiful mornin'" from the musical Oklahoma. Which made me chuckle right away and set the bar for how funny and irreverent this film was going to be. There are action scenes set to some extremely tense piano music that I loved, and you will also be treated to a few musical performances over the course of this film that may or may not knock your socks off.

Denzel is having an absolute blast as this character, a risk-taking mogul who might be in deep financial trouble but is always looking for an angle to exploit. Then you've got Jeffrey Wright as his chauffeur, Paul, a man who will have his loyalty to his friend and employer tested in many ways, and Ilfenesh Hadera as David's wife, Pam, an extremely sensible woman who has to keep talking sense into her grandiose husband. And there's John Douglas Thompson, playing the detective in charge of this kidnapping case, who treats the rich David with kid gloves but then gives no quarter to Paul, a classism that will get called out several times. This may be a film about a rich guy living in a penthouse in Brooklyn, but you can bet that before the movie is done, we will spend a lot of time in less bougie areas of the city and that's where the film truly sparkles. It is so much fun, and so alive, that even when things feel a little corny, you'll brush them off. You don't have time to dwell on them, because the next scene is going to captivate your imagination and make you fall in love with this movie and this city all over again.

The Roses: Written by Tony McNamara and directed by Jay Roach, adapted from the novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, I was worried about this movie because it stars some of my favorite actors, but the trailer made everything seem rather mid. Well, I needn't have worried. Because you do not cast Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as your central couple and end up with a dud of a picture.

Colman and Cumberbatch play Ivy and Theo Rose, two people who meet in the UK, but are fed up of their jobs and decided to fall in love and move to California. The trailer positions this entire movie as being about a horrible couple who hate each other, but this is actually a rather beautiful love story about how this couple fell in love, how deliriously happy they were for the first decade of their marriage...and THEN how they became a horrible couple who hate each other. The supporting cast is a murderer's row of folks like Sunita Mani, Ncuti Gatwa, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Zoe Chao, and Jamie Demetriou, who pop in and out of the film as friends of the Roses who must witness their fracturing marriage and look on in horror as their dinner parties get increasingly tense. But in a very repressed, British way that these Americans cannot fathom.

The comedy is immensely British, so I can see American audiences squirming through a lot of this film. But boy did I happily eat it all up. Cumberbatch and Colman know how to dispatch dialogue with the best of them, but the best treat is to simply watch Colman's face during a fight - the way her face can go from serene to tragic to furious within the blink of an eye is a wonder to behold. This is a movie that has a lot to say about love and marriage, and gender roles and the patriarchy within a marriage. It is so sharply observed, well-acted, and all set in the most gorgeous Californian backdrop, that every scene is a delight. If you have avoided seeing the trailer for this long, do yourself a favor and continue to avoid it. Head straight to the theater and revel in this film. 

Honey Don't!: Directed by Ethan Coen, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tricia Cooke, this movie is essentially a murder mystery set in modern-day Bakersfield, but populated by bizarre characters who sometimes seem like they stepped off the set of The Maltese Falcon in the 1940s. Margaret Qualley plays Honey O'Donahue, a private investigator who begins digging into the death of Mia Novotny, a woman who died in what was considered to be a tragic car accident. However, Mia had made an appointment to see Honey the day she died, so Honey is convinced there's something more to this "accident." 

While all of that's going on, we also get scenes at Four-Way Temple, a "church" helmed by Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans, having a glorious time), who is basically running a sex cult that also acts as some sort of front for French drug dealers? Or something? We also get insights into Honey's family life when she visits her sister who is overwhelmed with too many children, and also insights into Honey's sex life, when she starts dating MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), a cop at her local precinct.

There are a lot of seemingly random threads in this film, but they all tie up nicely in a little bow at the end. The trouble is, this movie is too weird, and none of the characters particularly feel like people you want to root for. Everybody is a bit too aloof and caricatured, and while Qualley is a commanding and delightful presence, she can't really save this movie. I'm not sure what happened here - this had the right ingredients to be a good film, but it goes off-piste too quickly with gratuitous female nudity (always a bugbear of mine - if you're gonna show naked women, you gotta throw in a penis too) and a lot of random non sequiturs. The conclusion to the mystery did genuinely surprise me, and I did appreciate that this film was a tight 89 minutes, but I can't give it a hearty recommendation. It's too average and all over the place. If you're thinking of seeing it...honey, don't!

June Movies Part 1: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, The Phoenician Scheme, The Penguin Lessons, Mountainhead

I have a long list of movies I have yet to see this month, but I've still managed to watch a lot of other random ones. Eclectic mix of reviews incoming...

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl: Written and directed by Rungano Nyoni, this is a Zambian movie about a woman named Shula (Susan Chardy) who discovers the dead body of her uncle lying on the road when she's driving home from a party one night. She seems strangely unfazed by this and goes through the motions of calling up her family and the police, navigating all the bureaucracy of getting this matter sorted out. What follows are the various funeral arrangements, involving Shula's mother and many aunties, aka the sisters of this dead man. Everyone is insisting that Shula grieve and show more emotion, but she seems to just be going through the motions, alongside her cousins, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), who seems to be perpetually drunk, and Bupe (Esther Singini), who is suicidal.

If you haven't pieced it together yet, the nieces are not mourning dead Uncle Fred because of...reasons. And yet this movie is a very dark comedy, an insight into the patriarchy, and the many ways in which older generations of women will still try to protect men, while the younger generation are trying to break a vicious cycle. It's a very vibey film, but I had never seen any movie set in Zambia before, so it was extremely engaging, along with its many parallels to my experiences with Indian funereal customs...and the patriarchy, of course. Give it a shot if you want to immerse yourself in something completely unique and strange, but obviously, trigger warnings abound.

The Phoenician Scheme: Written and directed by Wes Anderson, this movie is exactly what you would expect (or at least, it's what I expected). I find it increasingly hard to talk about Anderson's films because they just all seem to blend together into one big twee art project featuring a lot of famous actors delivering nonsensical dialogue or running around like they're in a Benny Hill sketch.

In this one, Benicio del Toro stars as Zsa-Zsa Korda, a rich man in 1950 who decides to name his daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who is a nun, as his sole heir. Together, they must travel the world and meet various investors to help fund Korda's morally dubious Phoenician scheme. And of course, along the way, maybe this estranged pair will build a proper familial bond. It's all very weird, it's a string of silly vignettes, and I didn't much care for it. But I must stress, I am entirely too jaded to properly review Anderson's movies anymore - my husband thought this movie was wonderful and a return to form. So, if you're a fan, perhaps this movie will perfectly scratch an itch for you. But if you're too tired of "auteurs" like I am, give it a miss.

The Penguin Lessons: Written by Jeff Pope, based on the memoir by Tom Michell, and directed by Peter Cattaneo, this movie stars Steve Coogan as Michell, an English teacher who decided to teach at a boy's boarding school in Argentina in 1976 when they were in the midst of a coup d'etat. During a holiday in Uruguay, he rescues a penguin who was caught up in an oil slick on the beach, and then proceeds to smuggle it back to Argentina. What follows is a heartwarming story about how a grumpy old Englishman learns to become more empathetic as he is forced to engage with this penguin. And also learns to maybe stop being politically neutral while the Argentinians around him are being abducted and tortured by their government? 

The tone of this film is all over the place, but it's certainly charming enough to stream over an afternoon, particularly if you're into cute penguins. But there's something decidedly colonial about the proceedings, with a classic "white people are shocked to learn how the rest of the world operates" aesthetic. Coogan delivers a good performance, and the movie is certainly intriguing since it is based on a true story, but beyond that, it lacks any real substance.

Mountainhead: Written and directed by Jesse Armstrong (aka creator of Succession and Peep Show - talk about range!), this is a bleak movie about four tech billionaires (well one of them only has millions), who convene in a snowy mansion in Utah to talk about how they might take over the world. Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, and Jason Schwartzman star as four Silicon Valley dudes modelled after the likes of Thiel, Musk, and Zuckerberg, who are of course convinced of their own inherent genius, and blithely ignore all the chaos their technologies have wreaked upon the world. At the moment they're meeting, the world is particularly rife with misinformation and anarchy, all spurred on by the fake videos and messages being circulated on a social media platform one of them owns, and what follows is a hodgepodge of tech speak and insanity.

This is probably a good movie for those of you who are massively online. But depending on your politics, you will love this movie for very different reasons. As you can imagine, I did NOT enjoy this movie, as it depicts the very reasons why I am not massively online and do not care for tech bros. It's the darkest of comedies, and practically a horror film. It does a brilliant job of capturing that painful Silicon Valley tech speak and how these men want to optimize their lives and think that they are the only ones who know how to run the world. It's the epitome of Move Fast and Break Things, and after you watch this movie, you'll certainly feel like your brain got broken!

May Movies Part 2: Fight or Flight, Final Destination Bloodlines, Novocaine, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

I've had a very busy few weeks at the movie theater as well as catching up on streaming, so if you need suggestions for Memorial Day viewing, here are my thoughts on some action films, a very gory horror comedy, and a gentle British musical movie. There's something for everyone!

Fight or Flight: Written by Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona and directed by James Madigan, Josh Hartnett stars as Lucas Reyes, a disgraced Secret Service agent who has been disavowed by the US government and stranded in Bangkok for several years. However, he then gets a call from his ex-girlfriend and former partner, Katherine (Katee Sackhoff), who needs his help on an urgent mission. She needs Lucas to get on a plane flying to San Francisco and find out who on board is the Ghost, an elite hacker who has been responsible for numerous cyberattacks around the world and has evaded capture at every turn. No one has any information on who the Ghost is or what they look like, so this is already going to be a very difficult mission. However, once Lucas boards the flight, he also learns that a slew of assassins are also passengers. They are all determined to kill the Ghost and reap the many bounties that have been offered on this kill. So, Lucas not only has to find the Ghost, but also protect them from a plane full of deadly killers. 

It's a bonkers plot executed to bonkers perfection. The identity of the Ghost was truly a surprise to me, and what followed was a very hilarious bloody action film, where more and more people were creatively killed on a plane. If that sounds like the kind of thing you would enjoy, go forth. It's good, mindless, long weekend fun.

Final Destination Bloodlines: I have never seen any of the Final Destination movies, but this one was certainly a great introduction to the franchise. Written by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor and directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, the film stars Kaitlyn Santa Juana as Stefani Reyes, a young woman who keeps having a recurring nightmare about her grandmother, Iris, in 1968, going through a deadly experience in a restaurant where everyone keeps getting killed in increasingly elaborate ways. Stefani decides to find Iris and ask her what this dream might mean. Well, turns out that dream is actually identical to a premonition Iris had when she was a young woman at that restaurant, and because she warned everyone about what she had seen, she saved them all from a certain death. Except, you can never evade Death. Over time, she realized that everyone who didn't die at the restaurant was getting killed, in the order in which they died in her premonition, and she subsequently became a recluse, trying to evade death at every turn.

Well, spoiler alert, Iris dies after meeting Stefani, and now Stefani realizes that everyone in her family is going to die in hereditary order, because they were all never supposed to be alive in the first place. What follows is a series of deaths via intricate Rube Goldberg-like chain reactions of events, which are insanely gruesome, but utterly comical. Your eyes will be wide open trying to figure out how each person is about to get killed, and let me tell you, these deaths are so convoluted that you will never see it coming. It's a silly, laugh out loud reminder that yes, Death comes for us all.

Novocaine: If you need even more blood and gore, perhaps you will enjoy this bizarre little tale written by Lars Jacobson and directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. Jack Quaid stars as Nathan, a man who has an extremely rare (but real!) genetic disorder that means he cannot feel any pain. While this may sound like a good thing, it's extremely dangerous, because pain is a vital biological response that protects us every day. As an example, Nathan needs to set an alarm to remind him to pee every few hours, else his bladder might explode. 

One day, some robbers burst into the bank where he works, steal a bunch of money, and kidnap Sherry (Amber Midthunder), the girl that he really likes. The police are delayed, and Nathan decides he needs to singlehandedly chase down these men and rescue Sherry. What follows is an extremely violent but funny action caper, where Nathan's body is battered and bruised in a myriad ways that he cannot feel. There's a lot of body horror here, so you're not gonna be able to stand this movie if you're squeamish, but much like Final Destination Bloodlines, all of this is played for laughs rather than horror. This movie should have been edited down to a tight 90 minutes, but Quaid is a charismatic lead (playing a role that is the polar opposite of his character in Companion), so this is a very entertaining way to spend an afternoon. As long as you don't mind a LOT of torture.

The Ballad of Wallis Island: Don't want any action at all? Then how about this quiet British comedy written by Tim Key and Tom Basden and directed by James Griffiths. Key stars as Charles, a man who won the lottery twice and lives on remote Wallis Island. His wife is now deceased, but when she was alive, the two of them were big fans of a folk duo called McGwyer Mortimer. So, Charles decides to invite Herb McGwyer (Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carrie Mulligan) to the island for a private concert. Except the duo split up ages ago after a romantic breakup, and Herb has no idea Nell was invited. 

This movie is heavy on the vibes, with gorgeous shots of this craggy, wild island and lots of melancholy and beautiful folk music. None of the story beats will strike you as particularly surprising or innovative, but Charles is quite funny as a hapless man who is just trying to get his favorite band back together, while Herb is grumpy and angsty, and Nell is just trying to make some money and sing some beautiful harmonies. It's a somewhat forgettable film, but it's quite pretty and poetic while you're watching it, and sometimes that's all you really need to be content.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning: If you want to celebrate Memorial Day like a true American, then head over to the theater for the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster. The final film in this franchise is here at last, written by Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie, who also directed. While I absolutely loved Dead Reckoning last year, this film needed some sharper editing and a lot more humor. The first hour was interminable, with a lot of talking and scene-setting and discursions on the AI known as The Entity, that is the main villain of the piece. The only reason I come to a Mission: Impossible movie is for the action set pieces, so I was terribly bored in the beginning.

Thankfully, the second half kicks into high gear, and we get all the trademark Cruise insanity. The stunt work is off the charts, with all manner of shenanigans on land, underwater, and up in the air. The plan is terribly elaborate, with multiple moving parts where every member of the team gets to contribute in some fashion to Ethan Hunt's hare-brained scheme, and they pull it all off with aplomb. Despite the shaky start, the film is ultimately quite satisfying, but it also makes it clear that it is time for this franchise to end. There are plenty of montages of events from the prior films, and nothing could serve as a starker reminder that while Cruise might be a perfect physical specimen, he really is getting too old for this shit. The man needs to quit while he's ahead, and this film is a perfect swan song.

May Movies Part 1: Thunderbolts*, Another Simple Favor, All We Imagine as Light

It's only the first week of May but I've already enjoyed three movies in the theater and on streaming. Whether you're into anti-superheroes, foreign film, or wacky thrillers, one of these films is bound to whet your cinematic appetite.

Thunderbolts*: Marvel is back, baby! After a recent series of lackluster films, I left this movie with a decided spring in my step. Written by Joanna Calo and Eric Pearson and directed by Jake Schreier, this outing gathers up a ragtag crew of burnouts that you may or may not remember from prior movies and assembles them into a motley crew that will eventually call themselves the Thunderbolts. And yes, there's an asterisk on the title for a reason, that you'll get to at the very end of the movie, though it's certainly not a major spoiler.

Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, and Sebastian Stan are all excellent as they play somewhat existential superpeople trying to figure out what their next steps should be. They are reluctantly united when they have to deal with Bob (Lewis Pullman), a dangerously unstable man who underwent an experimental trial to become invincible and is now (unsurprisingly) causing some major problems. The best part of this movie is that while Bob is purportedly the "villain" of the piece, this is actually a movie about mental health and tackling depression and trauma, topics that are the especial forte of these particular superheroes. There are some great set pieces, including a return to New York that reminded of the first time I watched The Avengers with awestruck glee in 2012, and foolishly declared that no one even needs to make a superhero movie again because we had reached the pinnacle. Marvel has gone through a lot since then, and while this movie is now treading through well-worn grooves that are no longer so novel as they once were, this is a well-crafted and fun film that genuinely tugs at your heartstrings and perfectly sticks the landing. This is the Marvel we all love, and this movie represents an excellent return to form before we launch into the millionth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Another Simple Favor: Written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis and directed by Paul Feig, this is a sequel to A Simple Favor, a movie I loved in 2018 but no longer remembered anything about. So, after doing a quick readthrough of the plot in Wikipedia (which was not so quick because, damn, that plot was twisty and insane), I pushed Play and settled in for a truly wacky sequel.

Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively are both back as Stephanie and Emily, women who started out as best friends in the last film and then quickly had a bit of a falling out after Emily turned out to be a murderer. Oops. Now, Stephanie has written a book about all the drama that went down in the first movie and has moved on with her life, but then Emily shows up on bail from prison and asks Stephanie to be her maid of honor since she's getting married to a wealthy Italian. So, we all whisk off to Capri, where, of course, some murders happen, and Stephanie has to figure out what on earth has gone down again. The costumes are simply stunning, the scenery in Capri is gorgeous, and the script is ridiculous and will make you roll your eyes so hard they might fall out. But listen, this movie is only on streaming, so just sit back on the couch, relax, and gaze at all the beauty on the screen while sparing your brain from the actual plot. There are worse ways to spend a weekend!

All We Imagine as Light: Written and directed by Payal Kapadia, this movie won the Grand Prix at Cannes last year and I was devastated when I couldn't figure out how to catch it in the theatres. Thankfully it's now available on streaming, and I ate it up with a big ol' spoon, like I knew I would. Set in Mumbai, this movie follows two Malayalee nurses, Prabha and Anu (the remarkable Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha). They are roommates who work at the same hospital, but Prabha is older and wiser, while Anu is more of a starry-eyed youngster who hasn't had the hope knocked out of her yet. Over the course of the film, we follow these two women's love lives, or lack thereof, as well as their friendships and adventures in this bustling and bewildering city. 

This is not a Bollywood movie - nothing is glamorous about their lives, and throughout the film, we get multilingual voiceovers from the ordinary working-class people who make up the bulk of this city, all struggling to make a living and who talk about Mumbai like it's a fantasy. This is a city of dreams - people come here in the hopes of making some money to send back to family members in rural villages, and to make a better life for themselves. But so many of them are reduced to just anonymous, miserable lives, and even after decades of living here, they are chewed up and spit out without a care in the world. In the midst of all that, it's a wonder to watch how Prabha and Anu navigate their lives, and the final shot of this movie, which tellingly does NOT take place in Mumbai, is truly one of the most beguiling and beautiful scenes portrayed on cinema. This is not the kind of Indian movie I'm used to seeing, but it reminded me a lot of Dhobi Ghat, another Mumbai-centric movie I adore. Movies about the "ordinary" people of Mumbai always end up being the most extraordinary, and this film is a true masterpiece.