October Movies Part 1: Finding Emily, Practical Magic 2, The Testament of Ann Lee

Let's kick the month off with reviews of three exceedingly random movies. Sounds promising right?!

Finding Emily: Written by Rachel Hirons and directed by Alicia MacDonald, this is a cute little British romcom about what happens when a young man named Owen (Spike Fearn) meets a girl named Emily at a student union bar at the fictional Manchester City University, gets her number, tries to call her later, and discovers he didn't get her complete number. Distraught, he decides he's just going to look for women named Emily who go to the university, which is how he finds Emily Raine (Angourie Rice), an American student who is getting her psychology degree in the UK. She has been struggling to write her thesis about how love is a form of destructive madness, so it feels like Owen and his desperate quest to find his lady love has fallen right into her lap. She agrees to help him, so she can secretly study him and see how his life falls apart, thereby proving her hypothesis.

Obviously, hi-jinks ensue and the two of them devise increasingly creative ways to find the real Emily, some of which may violate data privacy laws and get Owen into a lot of trouble. No points for immediately knowing how this plot is going to go -- it is very predictable -- but like with any good romcom, the journey matters more than the destination. Both of the leads are very charming, and the movie is full of swoony British vibes. This is a cozy film that will appeal to Anglophiles and is ideal for a lazy weekend afternoon. Enjoy!

Practical Magic 2: I had never watched the 1998 film Practical Magic, despite being a huge Sandra Bullock fan. So, I watched that movie in preparation for this sequel and thought it was exceedingly weird but had its charms. Which is now exactly how I feel about the sequel. Bullock and Nicole Kidman (what a cast!) play Sally and Gillian Owens, two women who were raised by their aunts (Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing) in a beautiful house in Massachusetts. Their aunts are witches, and they teach the girls how to wield their magical powers as well. But due to the doomed romance of an ancestor, the Owens women are cursed - they can never love a man. If they fall in love, that man will tragically die. In the first film, Sally falls in love, gets married, has two daughters, and then her husband dies, leading her to renounce her magic and deny her identity until circumstances force her to engage with magic again to save her sister. In this movie, the plot is almost exactly the same, except that she now has to engage with magic again to save her daughter.

I am not going to get into much more detail. If you like the first movie, you'll like this sequel, but otherwise move right along. These movies are just so tonally weird and strange, but at the end of the day, you've got Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock being fiercely feminist and extolling the virtues of sisterhood over everything else, even romantic relationships (though Lee Pace does show up to inject a little bit of romance into the proceedings, because, come on. You can't have Sandy B. in a movie and not let her be a little romantic!) This movie is all over the place, but 28 years later, at least the special effects are better, and it has its moments when you can't help but smile. Give it a chance and experience the magic!

The Testament of Ann Lee: This movie came out last year, but it has taken me this long to finally summon it on streaming and give it a go. Directed by Mona Fastvold who co-wrote the screenplay with Brady Corbet, I was hoping this would be a Brutalist-esque vibey epic about a real-life woman I had never heard about but would be thoroughly compelled by. While Amanda Seyfried cannot help but compel you with her enormous eyes and charisma, I found this movie to be a slog.

Seyfried plays the titular Ann Lee, a woman in 1730s Manchester who was persecuted in the UK for founding the Shaker movement and subsequently moved to America to preach and create a religious community. Of course, she was also persecuted there and deemed to be a witch, because that's how we always deal with charismatic women who command a following. The script really plods along, but this is also a musical for some odd reason, which means that I couldn't help but feel like we were getting a religious Mamma Mia every time Seyfried started singing. Perhaps if I was in a theater for two hours, I would allow myself to be swept along in this story and give myself over to the religious ecstasy, but this is emphatically not a movie that works on streaming unless you are very disciplined and forego all other distractions. Much like Ann Lee herself. Am I a heathen for preferring Practical Magic 2 to this critically acclaimed film? Yes. Just burn me at the stake.

September Binges: Legends and Tommy & Tuppence

As September winds down, do you find yourself curled up on the couch seeking tales of British crime? Well, I've got you covered with a true story and an Agatha Christie adaptation (of sorts). What more could you want!

Legends: Created by Neil Forsyth, this six-part miniseries tells the true story of how a small team of British customs employees (played by Tom Burke, Hayley Squires, Aml Ameen, and Jasmine Blackborrow) were tasked with bringing down a heroin smuggling ring that was plaguing Britain in 1990. Lacking any prior undercover experience, they applied for the job and under the command of Don Clarke (Steve Coogan), they are taught the basics of undercover work, given new identities, aka "legends," and set out on a very dangerous mission. These people are all seeking something different from their mundane jobs, but all for very different reasons, and what initially feels like a bit of a thrill starts to evolve into something far more dangerous. They might have bitten off more than they can chew, but our heroes are going to get the job done, right?

While the series is definitely a bit of a hagiography, it is still wildly tense and entertaining. All of the actors are doing wonderful work, and it's always great to see Steve Coogan in a dramatic role, playing a hard-bitten and world-weary man who still has that characteristic dark humor underlying it all. This is the perfect kind of thriller for a rainy afternoon, eminently bingeable and satisfying, and it tells a very unique and compelling story. Plus, it's just one miniseries, so you get sucked in for six hours and then never have to worry about Season 2. Isn't that the dream?

Tommy & Tuppence: I have been a massive Agatha Christie fan since childhood and the five books she wrote featuring the (eventually) married detectives of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are very charming and fun. So creator Phoebe Eclair-Powell has decided to create a contemporary adaptation starring Josh Dylan and Antonia Thomas as the titular detectives. In this first season, they are presented as exes who decide to start a detective agency together after they spend the first two episodes solving a murder. It's a six-episode season, so you'll get two more mysteries that they need to solve, alongside their own personal will-they won't-they drama that arcs over the whole series.

Is this a very charming show? Yes. Does it have little to nothing to do with the original books? Also yes. Apart from the names of Tommy and Tuppence, everything is so updated for the modern era that I find it hard to understand why we even need to call this a Christie adaptation. Perhaps if I re-read the original books, I would spot lots of Easter eggs and could take delight in that, but otherwise, this is a perfectly frothy and serviceable mystery show with two engaging leads. There are a lot of romantic complications, so I do think I'll keep watching Season 2 to see how all of that gets resolved, but this is more of a "binge for distraction" show, not one that fully demands your attention. 

September Movies: Coyote vs. Acme, Best of the Best, Pressure

September has been a bit of a slow movie month in my household but we're starting to get caught up on things. Whether you're seeking a raucous comedy or WWII drama, let's dive in for some reviews.

Coyote vs. Acme: Written by Samy Burch and directed by Dave Green, this is a movie that is so specific that I found myself both thoroughly delighted by it and also wondering if mine was the last generation that could even understand this film. In the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? this is a glorious Looney Tunes film where cartoon characters live alongside humans and Will Forte plays a jaded lawyer named Kevin, who has been hired by Wile E. Coyote to sue the Acme Corporation, because they keep selling him defective equipment for his various traps to catch the Road Runner. What follows is a very silly and engaging film about how there's a whole conspiracy over at Acme, and how maybe the Coyote does have a case after all.

The first half of this movie is just an ode to nostalgia where you get to watch the Coyote's many failed ventures and it feels like you're watching a dozen Road Runner cartoons on a loop. Then the action mostly shifts to the courtroom, which is a setting I am always fond of, but may not keep you as entertained. My favorite critique of this film came from a small child that was watching this in the theater next to me, who loudly exclaimed "I thought there would be more Coyote, but this is all Acme!" This movie may have cartoons, but I don't think I would ever take a kid to see it - this is solely a cartoon movie for grownups who grew up watching Looney Tunes and are going to burst out laughing at a throwaway joke about Speedy Gonzales. The animation is great, the script is engaging, and you'll feel like you're a little kid again.

Best of the Best: Written by Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam and directed by Lena Khan, this is a movie about two best friends, Maya and Anjali (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia), who join a Bollywood dance team at UCLA and have to navigate the competitive nature of the enterprise alongside their own personal baggage. There are a lot of jokes about the type of people who join a Bollywood dance club, including the one obligatory white boy who speaks Hindi and is more Indian than the Indians on the team, and when I saw the trailer, I immediately wanted to inject this movie directly into my veins. Unfortunately, the final product is aggressively mid.

The lead actors are great, but no amount of charisma can prop up this script that is fairly lackluster, and Ramakrishnan feels like she's just reprising her character from Never Have I Ever. There's a reason this movie is just on Netflix and not worth a theatrical release - you can stream it on a rainy afternoon, but you wouldn't want to venture out for it. The dance choreography is definitely spectacular and worth your eyeballs, but it feels like all the effort went into those sequences and everything else is just going through the motions. I may have enjoyed this more if it were a multi-episode series where we could get more twists and turns and character development, but as a movie, it failed to either entertain or engage me.

Pressure: After all those comedies, you know what you need? A tense World War II drama about the hours leading up to D-Day when the final decision about whether or not to deploy the troops came down to a meteorologist. Directed by Anthony Maras, who co-wrote the screenplay with David Haig, based on Haig's 2014 play of the same name, this is a true story about RAF Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott), who was recommended by Churchill to General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) as the best man in the country to provide a weather forecast for the upcoming D-Day landing. Preparations have been underway for weeks, and the American meteorologists, headed by Colonel Irving Krick (Chris Messina) have no doubts that the weather will be sunny and perfect, based on historical weather patterns. But Stagg is not interested in history - he wants the data to accurate forecast the future, and as he gathers that data, he doesn't have good news to report to the Armed Forces, who just want him to say that they will have clear skies ahead.

These actors are all at the top of their game and who doesn't want to watch Scott and Fraser go head-to-head in a battle of wills? The Americans are loud and brash, but Stagg is a quiet and resolute Scot who will not allow anyone to sway him from his scientific rigor. Even though we all know what eventually happened and that D-Day was a success, this movie makes you forget all of that for 100 minutes as you sit there, anxiously awaiting the final result and whether our hero will be redeemed for sticking to his guns. The footage of D-Day is also incredibly moving, set to music by Volker Bertelmann, and as with any movie about this time in our history, it all makes you feel incredibly horrified that humankind keeps engaging in warfare at all. This is a well-made and compelling film, and though it went in and out of theaters too quickly, it is well worth a watch.

August Movies Part 5: The Magic Faraway Tree & Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

August is nearly at an end, but did I cram in a few more movies to finish out the month? You know I did!

The Magic Faraway Tree: Let's get this out of the way first. This is expressly a movie for people who grew up reading Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree series and have extreme nostalgia for it. Or for people who have very small children who believe in fairies and enchantment and would be captivated by this film. Otherwise, just move along, you're not going to remotely understand why I watched this film.

Directed by Ben Gregor with a screenplay adapted by Simon Farnaby, this is a very silly but charming movie that fully taps into the nostalgia of Blyton's novels but tries to drag them into our modern age. Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy play Tim and Polly, a couple that live in the city with three children (played by Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche, and Billie Gadsdon) but then uproot the family and move to a desolate barn in the countryside when Claire quits her job and Tim decides that what they need is "the simple life." As you can imagine, their modern children who are very used to having cellphone signal and Wi-Fi are horrified by this turn of events. That inability to access technology, however, is what is needed for these children to decide to amuse themselves by heading into the Enchanted Wood and go up the Magic Faraway Tree, where they will meet Silky (Nicola Coughlan), Moonface (Nonso Anozie), Saucepan Man (Dustin Demri-Burns), Dame Washalot (Jessica Gunning) and all the rest. 

No, I'm not having a stroke. Again, if you read these books, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, but otherwise, just stop reading already! I have to say, none of the characters are exactly how I pictured them from the books, but the set-up of the Faraway Tree itself made me instantly flashback to being a little child who was delighted by the idea of sitting on a cushion and getting pulled up into its branches, then climbing a giant ladder to get to whatever magical land was at the top of the tree that day, and then coming back down by sliding down the Slippery-Slip that runs all the way down the inside of the tree. God, it was all so charming. 

The movie itself feels like a very British pantomime, and every actor seems to be dialing it up to a 100. Garfield is ridiculously lovely as the father figure though, and while he doesn't feature for much of the film, every time he's on screen, I couldn't help wishing this guy did more romcoms; I could watch him all day long.  Overall, did I think this movie was particularly good? No, it was entirely too cheesy for my liking. But did it absolutely unlock a primitive part of my brain that had been locked away since childhood. Hell yes.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die: Directed by Gore Verbinski and written by Matthew Robinson, this is one of those increasingly shocking things in our current filmmaking times: a thoroughly original movie not based on any existing IP. Instead, it is a gleeful and almost Matrix-y bit of science fiction that tackles the problem of AI and social media addiction. What more could you want?

The movie opens in an LA diner when a seemingly crazy man (Sam Rockwell) storms in, claims he is from the future, and needs to recruit a group of people from this diner to help him prevent the creation of an AI that destroys humanity in his future timeline. He is strapped to a bomb and will blow everyone up if they don't do as he says. Also, this is the 117th time he has delivered this speech to this group of people, because every previous attempt he made has failed; he has yet to find the right combination of people who could help him on this mission. It's very Edge of Tomorrow, and I was here for it.

The subsequent cast of characters that he recruits are a great group. You have two teachers, Mark and Janet (Michael Pena and Zazie Beetz), a grieving mother, Susan (Juno Temple), an Uber driver, Scott (Asim Chaudhry), and a woman who is literally allergic to technology, Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson). As the movie progresses, we will flashback to understand how technology has specifically been ruining each of these peoples' lives, and what they will now be able to contribute to this insane mission to save the world.

I can't give away more plot because you have to let the whole wacky thing unfold for yourself, but it's brilliantly inventive and compelling. This is exactly the kind of scaremongering I want to see from Hollywood about how technology is going to destroy us all. The third act does go a bit off the rails with the AI plot, and you will start to wonder exactly how high the screenwriter was when he wrote this script, but it's still a thoroughly entertaining and engaging movie that will legitimately make you laugh out loud with its audaciousness. There was a major plot twist that I saw coming from a mile away because of the way that a certain scene was filmed, but it was still fun to see it unfold. I love a time travel movie and I hate AI, so inject this movie directly into my veins. 

August Movies Part 4: Midwinter Break, GOAT, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Anaconda

I recently flew to LA for a short trip, which means plenty of hours of in-flight entertainment. Which now means you’re about to read some short reviews of movies I watched on my trip because I never saw them in theaters. Which ones would I actually recommend? Read on, it’s a surprise!

Midwinter Break: Directed by Polly Findlay and written by Nick Payne and Bernard MacLaverty (who adapted it from his 2017 novel), this is a supremely vibey movie about an older couple, Stella and Gerry (Lesley Manville and Ciaran Hinds) who decide to go to Amsterdam for a short vacation. While they are there, we watch the accumulation of hurts between these two people who have silently been bearing slights for years (well, more like the wife has been silent while the husband has been oblivious) but have now reached a tipping point. 

We slowly unravel their backstory and the dramatic incident in Belfast during the Troubles which led them to uproot their lives and move to Scotland, but overall, there really isn't much plot in this film. It looks pretty and stars two powerhouse actors but as the end credits rolled, I was left with a feeling of, "That's it?!" I enjoyed seeing all the tourist attractions in Amsterdam as I had just been there last year, but other than that, I can't say I have much to recommend about this movie. Though I might be persuaded to get the book and see if there was a whole lot more plot in there.

GOAT: If plot is what you seek, then director Tyree Dillihay and writers Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley have you covered with this animated movie about a small goat named Will (voiced by Caleb McLaughlin) who aspires to play the highly competitive and physical game of Roarball. Unfortunately, everyone mocks his ambitions because only big animals play Roarball, including his idol, a black panther named Jett (Gabrielle Union). Through a series of (un)fortunate events, Will gets recruited to play for his hometown team, the Vineland Thorns, alongside his hero Jett, and a motley crew of other animals voiced by Aaron Pierrs, Nicola Coughlan, David Harbour, Nick Kroll, and Stephen Curry himself. 

The Thorns have been playing terribly and one of the big issues is that Jett doesn't trust her teammates, feeling like she needs to score all the points herself. So of course, this is a movie that's about delegation, trusting others, and learning to work together as a harmonious team. It's wildly inventive, beautiful to look at, and has a brisk pace that will keep you engaged from start to finish. Given the Knicks' recent championship win, I couldn't help but think of who all these characters would be if they were Knicks players, so that is another fun side quest as you watch this film. You're welcome.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: Love animation but looking for a nostalgia boost with existing IP? Mario's got you covered. Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and written by Matthew Fogel, if you loved The Super Mario Bros. Movie, you can rest assured you'll enjoy this one too. You'll get a rollicking adventure across the galaxy as Mario, Luigi, Toad, Yoshi, and Peach (voiced by Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Keegan-Michael Key, Donald Glover, and Anya Taylor-Joy) attempt to save Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) from Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), who is just trying to save his dad (Jack Black). Along the way there will be plenty of audio and visual gags to remind you of the video games and scratch that primordial itch in your brain. 

The animation is colorful and stunning, the voice cast is spot on (Glen Powell shows up as a very Powell-esque character as well), the Lumas are cute as can be, and the story just rollicks along at a breakneck pace so you never get too bogged down in unnecessary details. It's fun and funny, and you already know if you're the target audience for it. So if you are, go forth!

Anaconda: Written by Kevin Getten and Tom Gormican, who also directed, the premise of this film is that a group of friends who love the 1997 movie Anaconda decide to remake it, despite not having a lot of money or filmmaking talent. The friends consist of Doug (Jack Black), Ronald (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) and when they get to Brazil, they enlist the help of Ana (Daniela Melchior) to take them on a boat down the river, and Carlos (Selton Mello), a snake handler who supplies a snake for their venture.

Of course, once they get into the jungle, it turns out there's an actual Anaconda on the loose that starts hunting them, and everything gets very meta. I cannot say I paid ANY attention to this movie. My friend, who is a fan of the original Anaconda, seemed to derive a great deal of enjoyment from it, but she had also never seen the trailer, which seemed to give away about 50% of the plot of this film. I guess all I can say is, if you love Anaconda and enjoy extremely silly comedies, this might be the movie for you. But unless you're in that very niche audience, give your eyes a rest. This movie is not worth it.

August Binges: The Hawk & Alice and Steve

Have I been bingeing more TV shows on streaming services? You know it! I've got two comedies for you - one is very American, and the other is very British, so pick your poison.

The Hawk: Created by Will Ferrell, Harpet Steele, and Chris Henchy, this is a show about a has-been golfer, Lonnie "The Hawk" Hawkins (Ferrell), who keeps playing at various tournaments with failing success in an effort to get into the US Open and finally win the career Gland Slam that eluded him in his prime. Matters are complicated by the fact that his son, Lance (Jimmy Tatro) is now also a pro golfer and is a rising star on the PGA Tour. Over the course of the season's ten episodes, father and son will miraculously find themselves playing against each other in the same tournament, and that will unpack a lot of parental baggage.

The supporting cast includes Fortune Feimster as Sam, a woman who suddenly becomes Lonnie's caddy, despite having no golf knowledge - you can imagine how that goes. And Molly Shannon, who plays Lonnie's ex-wife (well they haven't signed the divorce papers yet, so it's more of a long-standing acrimonious separation), and Lance's helicopter mom. The casting tells you all you need to know - these are a bunch of comedy folk who aren't exactly renowned for their subtlety so expect very broad humor, much of which feels like an SNL skit that is somehow being stretched out into a half hour of comedy for each episode.

Is this show high art? No. But did it provide sufficient diversion when I needed something to watch over the weekend that wouldn't require too many brain cells? Of course. Pop it on while you're doing your chores and have a chuckle!

Alice and Steve: I started this show in the afternoon, had to leave to meet some friends for dinner, and then binged it all when I got back home. It's only six half-hour episodes, so a very manageable day-binge, and well worth it. Though I certainly have certain quibbles that we can get into.

Created by Sophie Goodhart, this is a story about two fiftysomethings in London who are best friends, Alice (Nicola Walker) and Steve (Jemaine Clement). They have a raucous and loving friendship that is turned completely upside down when Steve starts dating Alice's 26-year-old daughter, Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith). This causes an upheaval that threatens everyone in their immediate vicinity, including Alice's patient but downtrodden husband, Daniel (Joel Fry) and their young son Dom (Tyrese Eaton-Dyce). It is British cringe comedy in its purest form, awkward but hilarious, with absolutely biting one-liners that kept me laughing for ages. 

This is such an unusual premise, and it's told with such wit and verve that I can't help but recommend it to everyone I meet. Unfortunately, the season does end on a horrendous cliffhanger, and the show hasn't yet been picked up for Season 2, so my recommendation does come with that caveat. I thoroughly loved the journey, but the destination was a little wanting. I dearly hope this show gets another season, because these actors and these characters are phenomenal and I desperately want to know what happens next in their extremely chaotic lives. But for now, I'm just glad I at least got a glimpse into their world for one season.

June Binges Part 2: Off Campus & The Other Bennet Sister

I watched two romance series this month - they both couldn't be more different, but each was swoon-worthy in its own way. Do you prefer your smut to be sexy or Victorian? Either way, I've got you covered!

Off Campus: Created by Louisa Levy, based on the series of hockey romances by Elle Kennedy, this is a sexy show that has a naked butt within two minutes of its runtime. Don't say you weren't warned. Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli star as Hannah and Garrett, two college students who are taking a philosophy class together but otherwise have nothing in common. Garrett is the captain of the hockey team who already knows he wants to go pro, while Hannah is a music major who is struggling to make ends meet and doesn't give a shit about hockey. Obviously, the two of them don't get along, until...they very much do.

This show has all your classic tropes - you've got enemies to lovers and a little Hitch inspiration with Garrett trying to coach Hanah on how to win over Justin (Josh Heuston), the guy she has a massive crush on. The sex scenes are gloriously steamy, and I have never been more grateful to Shonda Rhimes for bringing Bridgerton to our TV screens and thereby ushering in this whole era of streaming romance series. But more importantly, this show has so much emotional heft and heart. Both Hannah and Garrett have extremely dark pasts and will have to confront a LOT of psychological baggage over the course of eight episodes. They make the classic mistake of trying to solve everything through their relationship, but the show cleverly showcases how your partner can't be your only emotional support in life; both of them end up turning to their best friends for additional guidance (played excellently by Mika Abdalla, Antonio Cipriano, Stephen Kalyn, and Jalen Thomas Brooks - a supporting cast that gets up to all manner of shenanigans of their own over the course of the series). And despite the heavy themes that are being discussed, the show never gets too bogged down, miraculously maintaining a breezy and funny tone that kept me smiling throughout the entire series.

The final episode has an epic cliffhanger and I simply cannot wait for Season 2. I have spent a lot of time this past week watching Instagram reels about this show, reading interviews with the incredible costume designer (Charlene Akuamoah, a true genius), and becoming obsessed with the soundtrack, listening to multiple featured songs on repeat like a besotted teenager. This show is a frothy and fantastic delight and it's exactly the kind of escapism I crave when the real world gets to be too much. If you're currently a single lady who is fed up of the dating apps (or a happily married one who is still in need of some diversion), put your phone down and pull up this show. Just revel in these hot, heterosexual men for a while. Yes, they initially seem like douchey hockey jocks, but my god they end up having hidden depths and being feminist AF. It's enough to classify this show as a fantasy rather than a romance, but for eight hours, just let yourself be transported!

The Other Bennet Sister: Written by Sarah Quintrell and Maddie Dai, based on the 2020 novel by Janice Hadlow, this is a beguiling piece of fan fiction about the life of Mary Bennet, the awkward and plain sister in Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, who is merely treated as a joke and a weirdo in that novel. In this story, however, she has a robust and rich interior life, and we get a thorough psychological understanding of this much-ignored woman who still deserves just as much happiness as her sisters.

Ella Bruccoleri plays Mary, and she is perfectly cast, managing to be both nondescript and captivating as the script demands. The first few episodes give us the events of Pride & Prejudice from Mary's perspective, including a thwarted attempt at wooing Mr. Collins. However, as her sisters are all married off while Mary remains the old maid, her prospects seem terribly bleak, and it is unclear what will become of our heroine - is she doomed to a life of genteel poverty? Thankfully, she has relations who can take her in, and what follows is a wonderful tale, with parallels to Austen's other heroines who encounter multiple suitors with varying complications. 

The show is a bit of a slow burn, and of course, it is very Regency, but it's still delightful to see Mary get a little lustful when she sees a man rolling up his sleeves and giving her a flash of forearm. Her suitors are charmingly played by Donal Finn and Laurie Robertson, while Indira Varma and Richard Coyle are lovely as her aunt and uncle who offer all the love and support she could never seem to get from her odious mother (played irritatingly well by Ruth Jones). Even though I knew what was going to happen, the final episode melted my heart, and I was so proud of Mary, who had learned to become a strong, independent woman, brimming with self-confidence. In its way, this is yet another feminist romance, but it will still satisfy the itch of any Austen lover who is looking for a new way to enjoy their favorite tale of love and marriage.

May Movies Part 2: The Sheep Detectives, I Love Boosters, Obsession

What are you looking for this weekend? A breezy British murder mystery solved by a flock of sheep? An absurdist tale about end-stage capitalism and greed in the Bay Area? Or a supernatural horror thriller about the dangers of making your wishes come true? Yup, this post is really covering all the bases!

The Sheep Detectives: I was so excited for this movie and it absolutely did not disappoint. Written by Craig Mazin (adapted from the novel Three Bags Full by Leonia Swann) and directed by Kyle Balda, this movie stars Hugh Jackman for about ten minutes as a shepherd named George who lives a seemingly idyllic life in a gorgeous little English village until he ends up...murdered. Every night, he would read murder mysteries to his flock as a bedtime ritual, and turns out, these animals could fully understand him. One of them, Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is the smartest and always figured out who the killer was in those nighttime stories. Well now she had to put all her deductive reasoning to the test to examine clues and study the cast of motley human characters who all may have had their own reasons to kill the beloved shepherd.

The mystery is very cleverly plotted, and I can honestly say that the revelation of the killer was extremely satisfying. The script hits all the mystery tropes, and there are lots of shadowy and mysterious characters who show up, while we have Nicholas Braun as the hapless British police officer who has never had to deal with a murder in this village before and therefore will need plenty of coaching from the sheep to get this case solved. The animation is perfect, lending a lot of character and sass to the sheep (otherwise famously expressionless animals) with excellent voice casting from the likes of Bryan Cranston, Chris O'Dowd, Regina Hall, Rhys Darby, Brett Goldstein, Bella Ramsey, and Patrick Stewart. The live-action cast also features stalwarts like Emma Thompson, Hong Chau, Molly Gordon, and Nicholas Galitzine, who certainly do not disappoint. This movie was everything I wanted and expected it to be. No notes.

I Love Boosters: Written and directed by Boots Riley, this movie is certainly everything I expected it to be, i.e. weird and wacky. Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, the leader of the Velvet Gang (also consisting of Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige, and later, Poppy Liu) who shoplift designer clothes exclusively from a high-end chain called Metro Designers that is owned by a high-strung designer named Christie Smith (Demi Moore). Christie is incensed at the amount of money she is losing because these boosters keep stealing her clothes, and most of the film consists of the juxtaposition of the bougie life led by Christie and her insanely expensive fashions alongside the very colorful but chaotic lives of the boosters who are struggling to make ends meet.

Aesthetically, this movie is a veritable rainbow of delights. The whole plot about how Christie's stores operate was wildly inventive and fun, and costume designer Shirley Kurata has done miraculous work from start to finish with every single outfit Keke Palmer and the rest of the cast sport in this movie - give the woman an Oscar immediately. But, in classic Boots Riley fashion, the third act of the movie leaps wildly into the absurdist abyss, pushing its metaphor of labor exploitation and capitalist evil to the umpteenth degree and featuring a lot of sci-fi and fantasy elements that imply a great deal of weed was consumed in the making of this film. If you're familiar with Riley's previous film, Sorry to Bother You, none of this will surprise you in the least, but if this is your first foray into his work? Settle in, you're in for a very bumpy ride.

Obsession: Yes, I gave in to the hype and headed to the theater to watch this film to ensure it continues to break box office records. Written and directed by Curry Barker, this is a classic horror movie about a man named Bear (Michael Johnston) who has a crush on a girl named Nikki (Inde Navarette) but is afraid to tell her or do anything about it. When he buys a magic object called the One Wish Willow, he expects it to just be a novelty toy, but makes a wish anyway. Obviously, he wishes that Nikki loved him more than anything else in the world. And obviously, that wish comes true in rather horrifying fashion.

What follows is a creepy and hilarious tale about how horrible it is when your dreams come true. At first, we have the honeymoon period where Bear and Nikki are deliciously in love and happy. But gradually, it becomes clear that Nikki might be a tad...unwell. She is behaving strangely, getting way more clingy, and eventually, starts to lose her mind if Bear leaves her for any period of time. Things keep escalating and getting more frightening, and eventually more bloody. 

Did this movie telegraph most of its jump scares from miles away? Yes. But was it still awesome to watch this in a crowded theater and scream and laugh alongside the rest of the audience? Hell yes. Horror movies are such a fun genre to highlight the collective spirit of movie watching, so if you only have the time and money to see one movie in theaters this month, this should probably be the movie you pick. The performances are brilliant (Inde Navarette in particular is getting a lot of love for her insanely eerie and incredible work - what she can do with her face and voice is simply a marvel), the script is entertaining, and it is endlessly compelling from beginning to end. The hype is real.

April Binges Part 2: Company Retreat, Twenty Twenty Six, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins

I have been watching a lot of comedies this month and binged my way through two, while reaching the very satisfying finale of another one I had been watching week-to-week. Now they are all available to give you a giggle and some respite from reality. Dive in!

Company Retreat: This is from the creators of Jury Duty, but obviously you cannot just keep faking jury duty all the time, so this time, creators Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg decided to hire an unsuspecting man named Anthony as a temp for a fake company called Rockin' Grandma's Hot Sauce. Anthony joins the company and gets to know the wacky staff, and a week later, he is whisked away on their annual company retreat. He thinks the camera crew are just there to film a documentary about small businesses, but little does he know there's a whole operation behind-the-scenes that are filming him at every turn and trying to see what he will do in increasingly chaotic situations.

Much like Ronald in Jury Duty, I don't know how the show's producers managed to find such a gem of a man, but it's wonderful to watch Anthony just roll with the punches and make some deep and meaningful connections with these strangers. Things fall apart real fast, but Anthony, the good-natured temp, is always ready with a smile and some calming words to help defuse the situation and get his zany colleagues back on track. They even capture a moment when he says that everything is so nuts that you couldn't write a script to match it, which the show's writers obviously got a real kick out of.

The penultimate episode is where Anthony really gets to shine as the hero, making a grand gesture to help save this company and the people he has come to love over the course of such a short time. And then in the final eighth episode, we get the grand reveal where the show's producers walk him through just what has been going on for the past two weeks and we get some insights into the production design and rehearsal process that took place months before filming. It's such a massively creative endeavor, and it's insane to think that it requires everything running on rails - sometimes they don't, and we get treated to some moments when the actors had to quickly cover up a mistake, or the moments when they simply couldn't stop laughing. It's a very funny show, but mostly it's an extraordinarily heartfelt show that reminds us that there are still some very good humans out there in the world.

Twenty Twenty Six: I had no idea that creator John Morton was doing this show until I randomly saw a YouTube ad for it and discovered all six episodes were now available to binge. Which I proceeded to do in a heartbeat. Hugh Bonneville is back as Ian Fletcher, the man that we got to meet in Twenty Twelve, when he was helping to plan the 2012 London Summer Olympics, and W1A when he was trying to help re-brand the BBC. This time, he's in Miami, trying to help organize the 2026 FIFA World Cup (the show has to bleep "FIFA" anytime a character says it, which makes for an amusing running gag).

Much like those other shows, Ian finds himself amidst a group of weirdos, all of whom are trying to promote their agendas, and simply cannot answer a single question with a straight answer. There's the Zurich liaison, Eric (Alexis Michalik), who is absolutely no help in a crisis; the Sustainability champion (and potential love interest), Sarah (Chelsea Crisp), who is passionately pushing initiatives to make the games more environmentally-friendly but fighting a losing battle; Gabriela (Jimena Larraguivel), a Mexican woman who is heading up Optics and Narrative and wants every match to be held in her home country; Nick (Paulo Costanzo), the extremely volatile Business and Legal head, who is as New York as they come; Owen (Stephen Kunken) the head of Logistics, who doesn't seem to realize that's his job; and then Phil (Nick Blood) a Mancunian who loves David Beckham but otherwise doesn't know what's going on. And of course, they all have to deal with the social media team, who know nothing about football, but are going to try to market the hell out of it anyway.

The only other character who is back from the other shows is Will (Hugh Skinner), as Ian's bumbling assistant. Here, he continues to be thoroughly lost but still failing upwards, and it's fun to see how his every mistake turns into a potential win for this hapless team. Every episode features yet another bizarre crisis that requires quick decision-making and strategic problem-solving, which are of course, anathema to this group. And yet, they always manage to pull something out of the hat at the eleventh hour and save the day in some extremely improbable fashion. Each episode is only a half hour long, but I could watch these people talk in their strange double-speak for hours, saying absolutely nothing but talking a mile a minute anyway. It's truly the best of British humor, and while I don't care about the World Cup at all, I'm so grateful for it just because it allowed me to get another season of this absolute chaos.

The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins: Created by Robert Carlock and Sam Means, this is exactly the show you want if you've been missing the zany stylings of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or 30 Rock. Also, like Kimmy Schmidt, you may find yourself singing the theme song (composed by Jack Grabow) every single time you turn it on. 

Tracy Morgan stars as Reggie Dinkins, a famous football player who became infamous once he was caught gambling and was ignominiously kicked out of the NFL. Now, an Oscar-winning documentarian, Arthur (Daniel Radcliffe, in an incredibly delicious comic role), has arrived to film Reggie and his life, in the hopes of rehabilitating his image. Arthur himself has had a fall from grace after he was fired from directing a superhero blockbuster. He has a lot to prove, but a documentary about Reggie Dinkins may not be the best way to do that. Meanwhile, Reggie's support system consists of his ex-wife Monica (Erika Alexander), who is still his manager and is very close to him as they co-parent their teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall); his best friend Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), who was his former teammate and is a very lovable doofus; and his fiancée Brina (Precious Way), a young entrepreneur who is always hustling to find a new side hustle, and fits right into the madness.

This is a show that is incredibly joke-dense. Forget the actual plot and storylines, half of the time you will find yourself dying of laughter at side gags involving fake TV shows like FDNY: Chicago, where New York firefighters go to Chicago to fight fires but keep forgetting the time difference or losing their hoses at O'Hare. If that sounds like the spectacularly dumb but hilarious comedy you're into, then buckle up, because this show has ten episodes of the stuff to deliver. All of the actors are having a great time, and who knew Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe were the comedy duo we had all been missing in our lives?! The show also has a tremendous amount of heart and is so good-natured. Everyone on this show loves and supports each other, even if they are the most ridiculous people on the planet, and every time you watch an episode, you are bound to laugh out loud at least once and then leave with a big smile on your face.

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!

March Binges: The 'Burbs & How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

A lot of new shows have popped up recently and I've been trying to watch them all. In today's installment, I've got some recommendations if you need some silly comedies with a side of dark murder mystery. Get ready for some chuckles and major tonal shifts!

The 'Burbs: First off, this show stars Keke Palmer, so how could you go wrong? Create by Celeste Hughey and based off the 1989 movie starring Tom Hanks (that I vaguely remember watching but have no memory of), Palmer and Jack Whitehall (again, how could you resist?) play Samira and Rob, a couple that have newly moved into the idyllic suburb of Hinkley Hills. Rob grew up here, and he and Samira have now moved into his childhood home after his parents decided to retire on a cruise ship. They are city folk, but they just had a baby, so obviously, a move to suburbia and a good school district felt inevitable. Initially, Samira is going a little stir crazy at home with the baby, still on maternity leave and missing the intellectual stimulation of being a high-powered attorney. But she starts to befriend the kooky neighbors (a supporting cast that includes the likes of Paula Pell, Mark Proksch, and Julia Duffy) and begins to feel more like a part of the community. Which all comes crashing down when a mysterious man named Gary (Justin Kirk) moves into the creepy Victorian mansion on the corner and seems like he's up to no good.

The first season is only eight episodes so just let it wash over you. There's a mystery about a girl who disappeared from the Victorian mansion many years ago, who happened to be childhood best friends with Rob and his other best friend Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar). They are being awfully sus about the whole thing, so that piques Samira's interest. And of course, there's a lot of discussions of NIMBY'ism and racism with Samira being one of the few people of color in the cul-de-sac. It's all very refreshing and funny, with a genuinely intriguing mystery that you get to follow along until the end of the season. These actors are having a lot of fun, and the show is a great binge, so hop to it!

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast: This show is created by Lisa McGee, who created Derry Girls, so that was the vibe I was expecting. However, turns out this show is much more like Bad Sisters. So be aware of that before you sign up for some Irish crime comedy-drama in your life. We follow Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara (Roisin Gallagher, Sinead Keenan, and Caoilfhionn Dunne), three close friends who were all in school together as children. There was a fourth member of their group, Greta (Natasha O'Keeffe), and the unifying incident that kicks off this series is her...death. The three friends show up to her wake but quickly piece together that the circumstances surrounding this death are extremely odd. Things just snowball from there.

I'm not going to pretend I understood what was going on during this show most of the time. It is quite chaotic and while it's a comedy, it's an extremely dark one, with a lot of murder and mayhem at every turn. But, like Derry Girls, this show has a phenomenal soundtrack that really transported me to my childhood listening to the UK Top 40, and the leading ladies were just wild and entertaining enough to keep me engaged for all eight episodes. I can promise this show won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like to watch women being silly and solving mysteries despite being slightly incompetent, this might be exactly the thing you end up watching on a lazy afternoon.

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.

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?

December Movies Part 2: Jay Kelly, If I had Legs I'd Kick You, Fackham Hall, Ella McCay

Time for another round of rapid-fire movie reviews as I scramble to catch up on everything flooding the theaters and Netflix for the winter. We're gonna cover a slew of genres and a slew of opinions, so get ready!

Jay Kelly: Directed by Noah Baumbach, who co-wrote the screenplay with Emily Mortimer (who has a small role in the movie as well), this is a movie about an actor named Jay Kelly (played with classic Cary Grant charisma by George Clooney) who has had an enormously successful career but burned many bridges along the way with friends, family, and colleagues. He decides to go on an impromptu trip to Europe, ostensibly to receive a lifetime achievement-style tribute in Italy, but really to see if he can spend more time with his daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), who is travelling with her friends and has no interest in spending time with her absentee father. On this trip, he takes his entourage, including long-suffering manager Ron (Adam Sandler), who is constantly juggling his demanding clients with his demanding family, and publicist, Liz (Laura Dern), who is entirely too stressed out to be dealing with her client.

What follows is a lot of nostalgia and flashbacks to pivotal moments in young Jay's career, the important people who came in and out of his life, and the various ways in which he always chose his work over anything else. There's some pretty scenery, and Clooney does some lovely movie-star acting, managing to convey his sadness and resignation over his choices. But overall, the movie just feels like a big ball of nothing, a rumination on stardom that has nothing particularly revelatory to convey. I suppose it's a perfectly adequate "stream on the couch" movie, but there's not much else going on here.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You: Written and directed by Mary Bronstein, this is a weird and trippy movie about a therapist named Linda (played magnificently by Rose Byrne) who is really struggling. She has a very sick daughter who must be fed through a feeding tube and needs constant care and supervision; her husband is a ship captain and away on an eight-week work trip; the ceiling in her apartment has collapsed so she and her daughter need to move to a shabby motel while repairs take place; she has increasingly needy and difficult patients to deal with at work; and her sessions with her own therapist (played wonderfully by Conan O'Brien) are getting increasingly adversarial.

As you can imagine, this is a very tense movie, and the psychological discomfort keeps ratcheting up as Linda's life continues to spiral out of control. It's essentially a horror film about being a woman who has to do it all with very little support, and who is being challenged in every possible sphere of her life. Byrne's performance is nail-bitingly excellent, but this is not a movie that I would ever want to watch again. Give it one essential viewing and then tune into a sitcom to cleanse the palate.

Fackham Hall: Directed by Jim O'Hanlon and written by the Dawson Bros., Jimmy Carr, and Patrick Carr, this is an extremely silly and very British movie. It is a satire of self-serious prestige British dramas like Downton Abbey or Gosford Park, so get ready for a lot of puns and absurdity in the style of The Naked Gun movies. Set in 1930s England, the film follows the Davenport family who live in the grand estate of Fackham Hall but do not have a male heir who could inherit it. The eldest daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), is all set to marry her cousin Archibald (Tom Felton), as incest is a core family tenet to keep the bloodlines pure, but when that wedding is thwarted, hopes are set on the dreamy and idealistic younger daughter, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie) to save the family. Of course, Rose has fallen in love with a young servant named Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe), so that's going to complicate matters.

Further complicating matters is the murder of her father (played by Damian Lewis), so then we get a classic murder mystery spoof, with Tom Goodman-Hill playing Inspector Watt (yes, we get a whole sequence of people being very confused as to WHAT his name is...Watt?). This movie is dumb but diverting, a perfectly pleasant way to while away 90 minutes when you have some time to kill or you just want to let your brain relax for a bit. If you love silly British comedy, this is exactly what you seek, but if you've never watched a British show in your life, this is not the movie for you.

Ella McCay: Written and directed by James L. Brooks, this is a deeply strange movie that features an all-star cast delivering amazing performances in service of a terrible script. Emma Mackey stars as the titular Ella, a 34-year-old woman who unexpectedly becomes the Governor of her state and is a passionate and principled politician. Unfortunately, she has a lot of challenging men in her life. Her estranged father (Woody Harrelson) is back in town and demanding forgiveness, she is increasingly worried about her anxious and agoraphobic brother (Spike Fearn) who isn't answering her messages, her husband (Jack Lowden) wants a bigger role at her side in government, and her old boss (Albert Brooks) is constantly nagging her about how she needs to be more charismatic and less idealistic if she wants to succeed as a politician. The only supportive people in her life are her bodyguard and driver (Kumail Nanjiani), her protective secretary (Julie Kavner, who is also the narrator of the movie, probably just because she has the most distinctive voice known to mankind?), and her Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is the only functional family member she has had in her life, and who fiercely loves and champions her.

This movie is a hot mess - there are a lot of storylines, and it proceeds like a bunch of vignettes (perhaps hearkening to Brooks' success in writing and directing sitcoms), and the dialogue is astonishingly clunky. The actors are fantastic, particularly Mackey and Curtis who work beautifully off each other, and I can't wait to see Mackey be a superstar in other movies, but this movie is not it. Honestly, I would not have minded this movie as much if it wasn't for one particular storyline involving Ella's brother and his ex-girlfriend, played by Ayo Edebiri. As the only Black character in this film, it was particularly galling to see what this movie made her go through, and I was NOT here for it. I agreed with almost all of the moral values of this film, and the good people got to have a happy ending while the bad people got their just desserts. But boy oh boy does it get it very wrong with the brother. Don't bother suffering through this movie in a theater, but please do watch it on streaming and let me know what you thought. I still can't quite understand what point it was ever hoping to make.

December Movies Part 1: Rental Family & Hamnet

There are a lot of movies to watch this month so I'm slowly making my way through them all. Here are my reviews of a technically perfect movie that seems destined for Oscars, and a shaggier but extremely compelling movie that won me over. My reactions to these movies surprised me, maybe they will surprise you too!

Rental Family: Directed by Hikari, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Blahut, this is a movie about a struggling American actor named Phillip (Brendan Fraser), who has been living in Japan for seven years after he initially had success with a commercial, but now can never seem to get good work. When he meets Shinji (Takehiro Hira), the owner of a rental family agency, he overcomes his initial reservations and agrees to be a part of this company that offers up a uniquely Japanese service - actors for hire who can help people by pretending to be their family members or acquaintances, so they can live out some sort of make-believe scenario that better helps them cope with their life or get out of a sticky situation with a relative. Because there is so much stigma around mental health in Japan, this is what people usually resort to instead of going to a therapist to work through their problems.

I was initially worried that this movie was going down a white savior route. Phillip is constantly troubled by his conscience and wondering why these Japanese people keep bending themselves out of shape to please their families instead of acting on their own desires. But as the movie progresses, there is a great deal of back-and-forth between him and Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), his colleague who is passionate about this job and the good it can do, but who also starts to realize that maybe some of the services they offer are subject to more scrutiny. The very first job that Phillip takes on is so clearly helpful to his client, but the next two are much more morally ambiguous. Wrestling with that ambiguity over the course of this film makes it a truly engaging and thought-provoking experience.

Overall, I was delighted by this movie. There were moments when it got a bit maudlin, but I found myself moved and charmed and thoroughly swept away by all the performances, especially Fraser's quiet but powerful work, where he lets his eyes do most of the talking. It's also simply wonderful to be treated to an original story with fresh perspectives we don't ordinarily get to see in Hollywood movies. More please!

Hamnet: Directed by Chloe Zhao, who adapted the screenplay with Maggie O'Farrell (who wrote the 2020 novel), this is a story set in Elizabethan England that portrays William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) meeting and falling in love with his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), starting a family, and then, grief-stricken from losing his son, Hamnet, eventually writing his tragic masterpiece, Hamlet.

This movie is a technical masterpiece. The production design by Fiona Crombie is unparalleled, capturing Shakespeare's England in vivid and striking detail alongside Malgosia Turzanska's beautiful costumes, while Zhao's direction manages to be both sweeping and intimate, full of gorgeous, dappled shots of nature, and then long close-up shots of her actors, who are delivering performances of a lifetime. Unsurprisingly, Mescal and Buckley are brilliant in this film, particularly Buckley who lets that marvelously mobile face of hers take us on an emotional rollercoaster. But even the child actors are superb, especially Jacobi Jupe as the young Hamnet, who has to convey rather deep and serious emotion over the course of this film. In a lovely bit of casting, his older brother, Noah Jupe, plays the character of Hamlet in the performance of the play that takes up the finale of the movie.

All that being said, this movie left me cold. It feels churlish to say so, but it was too perfect and polished. I loved the novel, but that meant I knew the story already, and again, while the movie is a perfect adaptation, nothing felt original or particularly fresh about it. There also was a rather unfortunate choice during the most powerful scene that completely took me out of the movie. There is a music cue that is not original - it's a beautiful piece of music that I recognized from another movie, and it has recently been deployed in other films and TV shows anytime the creators really want to tug at your heartstrings. That lack of originality, while still using a technically perfect piece of music for the scene, was the final straw for me. This is a great movie, and I don't begrudge it any awards, especially for Best Production Design or Best Actress, but I left the theater wishing it had touched my heart more.