Month: June 2022

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: 95 minutes
Synopsis: Dale tries to convince Chip to reunite their double act to cash in on nineties nostalgia
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: funny, meta, well-paced and easy to watch
What I don’t like about it: Andy Samberg, animation can be a little janky, feels like a cover version of a Phil Lord and Chris Miller movie

Review:
The premise of this one can be a little disconcerting; it involves a parallel Earth in which cartoon characters live among humans and the 90s cartoon of the same name was shot on a live-action set by the cartoons themselves. It’s odd but soon established and then the writers begin to cram in jokes. Some are really quite funny: Dale has gotten “the CGI surgery” to make himself more appealing to the youth but it hasn’t worked out and he’s working nostalgia conventions alongside some notable and hilarious characters that I won’t spoil here. The main problem with this one is acknowledged in an early line from Chip: “Dale, absolutely no one wants to see our cartoon rebooted” – it’s enough for a fun, distracting Sunday afternoon movie but not enough to bring any real excitement to the viewing experience and that puts a ceiling on the enjoyment level. The team behind this one is basically The Lonely Island and it is funny and competently made but this nod-wink “we know you don’t want it so we made it meta funny” thing has been done over and over since 21 Jump Street and it starts to feel like when you’ve seen one, you’ve heard the joke(s).

Content notes (may contain spoilers): cartoon body horror

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: Nine one-hour episodes
Synopsis: Young woman looks after creepy orphans in spooky manor house
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasionally has excellent unsettling sequences, the child actors were great, as were the characters
What I don’t like about it: completely lost the plot by halfway, has an entirely skippable uninteresting penultimate episode

Review:
Mike Flanagan has a great formula for horror but there are better examples of it than this. What starts out promising, albeit with plenty of filler, soon evaporates and there’s an episode at the end that seems designed to kill the goodwill of anyone who invested their time in it

Content notes (may contain spoilers): general horror tropes, animal abuse, it’s very dark

The Double (2013)

Where to find it: Rent on BFI Player or wait until it’s on Film4
Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: A meek office worker finds his life usurped by an assertive doppelgänger
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: the retrofuture aesthetic, arresting visuals, music
What I don’t like about it: slow and quiet, demanding lots of attention

Review:
Jesse Eisenberg ably plays the double role of nerdy doormat and arrogant charmer but the real star here is Richard Ayoade, setting up visuals and sequences that Kubrick would be proud of. The music, a mix of staccato stings and Asian crooning, is another highlight. Worth watching if you don’t care much for plot.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): stalking behaviour, suicide, violence, cutting, depersonalisation

The Other Two (2019)

Where to find it: Prime Video maybe, sometimes on All4
Length: Twenty half-hour episodes over two seasons so far
Synopsis: Twentysomething siblings trying to make it in New York have to deal with a new reality when their kid brother becomes a viral superstar
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: the jokes (“I’m going to an exclusive unveiling later – they’re debuting a new Hadid sister”), it’s really funny and absurdist and has actually good gay jokes, the subtle way they depict things
What I don’t like about it: the pacing feels off sometimes, the main characters are so aloof that they’re hard to connect with

Review:
This is the funniest show I’ve seen in quite a while and it also has more depth than most, I love the subtle touches like how Chase seems so much younger when not performing and the way they use split-screen to compare the situations of the main sibling characters.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): mental health (anxiety), occasional sex scenes

Our Flag Means Death (2022)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Ten episodes, roughly 30-minutes each
Synopsis: A clownish band of pirates, led by a rich dandy, get more than they bargained for when their underwhelming adventures are interrupted by the fearsome Blackbeard
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: Taika Waititi, fun writing, good drama in the latter half, lovely romance and Taika Waititi (seriously if he doesn’t get an Emmy it’s a robbery)
What I don’t like about it: the first few episodes are very underwhelming, the mix of history and pure fiction can be hard to understand and delineate

Review:
This show has a secret! It begins as a middle-of-the-road comedy and feels, for the first couple of episodes, like a failed attempt to make “What We Do in the Shadows but with pirates” but that hides its true nature. The show “grows the beard” in episode four when Taika Waititi’s Blackbeard is introduced. His name has been enough to get me interested in a project since Boy, but his acting ability has been criminally underutilised since then and he brings this project to another level – giving me chills at least once an episode towards the end. Rhys Darby brings his unique charm to the role of “The Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet and the rest of the cast glue as an ensemble as it goes on, Ewen Bremner being a particularly memorable highlight. Check this one out if you have enough time to sit through a few not-so-great episodes.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): Comical, but occasionally vivid, violence and injuries; relationship problems; mental health (BPD, DID)

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+ Star, apparently
Length: Seven 45-minute episodes
Synopsis: A Mormon police detective investigates a brutal crime which causes him to examine his faith and church
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: the use of flashbacks to create mounting tension and explain LDS history, absorbing acting and writing, prestige TV without long boring opening titles
What I don’t like about it: it is yet another dark prestige true crime miniseries

Review:
From the first episode of this series, we are thrown into the weird world of Utah – its expansive rural families, unique religious vocabulary and inescapable smell of theocracy – and it’s as fascinating, dark and hard to leave as the state itself. Andrew Garfield channels the spirit of Ned Flanders to portray a small-town detective investigating a standard Fincheresque grisly murder while trying to accomodate his new partner, a Paiute Native hardened Vegas cop – a fun dynamic. As their investigation progresses, flashbacks show their victim marrying into a very large and prominent Mormon family and gradually finding herself at odds with their patriarchal lifestyle. A second set of flashbacks go back even further, to the early days of the Church of Latter Day Saints and particularly its history with polygamy, and are used to make connections between the fundamentalist beliefs of the murderers and the historical events that inspired their mindset. All very psychological and interesting.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): murder (femmicide, infanticide), child sexual abuse, controlling patriarchal behaviour

The Outlaws (2021) Season 1

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Six 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: A diverse group meet in Bristol for court-appointed community service and become entangled in local organised crime
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: funny and snappy dialogue, characters and plot which eventually become engaging, fun pacing
What I don’t like about it: the characters begin as crude satirical stereotypes and the premise and plot feel cheesy through the first half of the series, it’s more than a bit contrived

Review:
It took me several tries to care about Stephen Merchant’s new series because it has such a weak opening; a fun premise is marred by characters made of straw and used as target practice for the show’s admittedly very strong jokes. Had I binge-watched the show, this may have been less noticeable because by the latter half of the season they were more fleshed out and easier to care about and by the end I felt the contradictions within and between each member of the group had been fully explored and partially resolved, the perfect end point of the story circle. It’s nice to see a TV show get an honest first season that doesn’t just feel like a pilot for a hopeful franchise and it makes me all the more excited to see a second.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs and alcohol, racism and prejudice, police and crime, mental health (particularly histrionic “personality disorder”), some peril but little violence