Month: September 2022

Tokyo Vice (2022)

Where to find it: Lionsgate+ (?) on Amazon, BBC iPlayer
Length: Eight 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Engrossing American neon-noir set in Japan
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: immersive, well-made, aesthetic, acting, opening titles
What I don’t like about it: requires a lot of attention, occasionally stretches credulity

Review:
Drenched in a nighttime neon-soaked atmosphere, this crime thriller series plays really well and may be the best new drama series of the year. Ansel Elgort plays Jake Adelstein, a dedicated weeb and cub reporter with a nose for news that doesn’t ingratiate him with his colleagues at the Meicho Shimbun (a fictional composite of Japan’s national newspapers) as he investigates organised crime during the lost decades. The show never misses a chance to feature the unique elements of Japanese culture such as yakuza rituals and hostess clubs, it’s a very interesting setting which makes up for any early weakness in plot. Elgort’s Japanese seems great and other cast members, including Rachel Keller and Ken Watanabe, are also excellent and compelling. Supposedly a true story, it’s clear that liberties have been taken with the truth but it makes for great drama if you don’t mind the fiction.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, sex, lots of smoking

Loot (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Ten 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Bland sitcom inspired by Mackenzie Scott and Melinda Gates
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: Maya Rudolph and Ron Funches are always fun
What I don’t like about it: barely makes an impression

Review:
This ripped-from-the-headlines sitcom about a divorced billionaire giving away her money is full of unlikeable characters, weak jokes and sitcom clichés.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: 80 minutes
Synopsis: Hyper-empathy horror play
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: themes, dialogue, acting, ending
What I don’t like about it: sometimes cartoonish villains

Review:
Salma Hayek plays Beatriz, a Mexican-American immigrant and alternative medicine practitioner, who finds herself stuck at her rich client’s mansion during a business dinner. Beatriz feels empathy very deeply, her best friend is a goat who has recently been senselessly murdered. The people she is stuck at dinner with barely feel anything at all. It plays out very tense as we watch Beatriz’s feelings get hurt dozens of times, only occasionally giving voice to her opinions. Of course it builds to a large argument in which Beatriz is ‘hysterical’ and the rich people continue with their disgusting lives.

Mike White, one of my most favourite creatives, wrote this dialogue-heavy play which is an absolute horror movie to those of us who share Beatriz’s hyperempathy. I am very appreciative to have media which I feel explains something ineffable about myself and the ending was sadly very realistic. It means a lot to me.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, animal rights / meat, suicide

National Theatre Live: Julie (2018)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: National Theatre at Home
Length: 85 minutes
Synopsis: Play about a spoiled rich girl and her staff
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: writing, acting, staging
What I don’t like about it: filming

Review:
Polly Stenham adapts August Strindberg’s Miss Julie into an emotional modern tale of power, manipulation, class and race. The play takes place in the improbably large kitchen of Julie’s swanky London flat. Her father, unseen, is clearly a man of wealth and privilege and Julie is his princess, spoiled and neglected simultaneously. A party is underway at Julie’s flat and she keeps sneaking away to the kitchen to do a line and talk to her personal assistant Kristina and valet Jean. She treats them like her friends, asking them to do her favours rather than fulfil her orders but the power imbalance is clear to the two employees, who are in a romantic relationship. Julie, increasingly trashed throughout the story, flirts with Jean and they fuck, both using each other. Kristina finds out and it gets frosty before Julie has a full-scale (and I mean intense) mental breakdown in the final act. The staging uses distance to wonderful effect, something that doesn’t always come through in the close-up shots and cuts of this filmed version.

I want to plug National Theatre at Home, it’s a subscription service but you can gift yourself a one-month subscription for £10 and watch around 100 plays, if you have the time. If you do try it, check out this one and also Yerma, Amadeus and Angels in America, if you have a spare seven hours for the latter.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, alcohol, racism, personality disorders, sex, gruesome animal death (simulated), suicide

Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles (2022)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: Twenty 20-minute episodes
Synopsis: Funny animals do action comedy
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: funny, continuing plot, fun setting, pretty digitally-painted flashbacks, imaginative and cool
What I don’t like about it: janky animation, ugly character design

Review:
Inspired by but not really based on the long-running comic Usagi Yojimbo, this cartoon for tweens follows Yuichi Usagi, an anthropomorphic rabbit living in 24th century ‘Neo Edo’, Japan. He battles adorable demons with his friends, each with a similarly predictable name based on their species, and tries to come to terms with the legacy of his ancestor (the one from the comics). Creator Doug Langdale’s familiar ‘voice’ is present, at once light and edgy, cynical and positive, sarcastic and genuine. The humour is its best quality; it’s a funny show and the plot should be enough to keep kids entertained, though the violence and weapons make it unsuitable for younger children.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, swords and other weapons

A Field in England (2013)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: Odd, unpleasant allegory on the English Civil War
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: writing is genius, acting brilliant, editing great
What I don’t like about it: it’s really not much fun and very weird

Review:
An eccentric, grim puzzle about three filthy, desperate deserters from the English Civil War who are led on a dark journey to find treasure in the titular field. They eat hallucinogenic mushrooms and are pressed into service for a guy they pulled out of the ground. Kinda genius, especially Amy Jump’s screenplay with period language and observations on class and religion. If you do take it on, expect lots of pretension – it’s in black & white and makes extensive use of tableau vivant – and prepare to be confused.

The characters represent paganism (Jacob), “slave mentality” Christianity (Friend), the clergy and intelligentsia (Whitehead), the middle class (Cutler) and the ice-chewing sociopaths out for a quick buck (O’Neill) and they’re haunted by visions of an ‘ill planet’ as they dig ever deeper at the behest of their new masters. It’s a great allegory but if you’ve no stomach for weirdness, realism and history there won’t be much here to enjoy.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): (pretty much) strobe lighting, violence, defecation, genitals

West Side Story (2021)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: 156 minutes
Synopsis: … it’s West Side Story
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: spectacular, reverent, beautiful
What I don’t like about it: Ansel Elgort, too much lens flare, a touch too long

Review:
The most fun I’ve ever had watching a Spielberg movie, this isn’t so much a remake of the sixties movie as a re-adaptation of the original play and it’s such a huge improvement. The beautiful Bernstein score is turned up in this version, the star of the show over Sondheim’s often juvenile lyrics. Spielberg uses his gift for dynamic camera work and visual flair, the period recreation looks perfect and the Technicolor effects are charming. My only negative opinion of the direction is that he used to use lens flare to wonderful effect (E.T., Close Encounters) and then J.J. Abrams cribbed it without knowing how to use it, drowning every scene in digitally-enhanced lens flare and his hero seems to have stooped to the same level.

Ansel Elgort, the token name in this movie, puts in a lot of effort and his dancing is very good but his singing is less so and he’s out of his depth in this cast of legitimate triple threats. It drags in the third act but I liked the finish. If you can tolerate musicals at all, see this one. It bombed at the pandemic-affected box office but it’s growing an appreciative audience on streaming.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, racism

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: FreeVee on Amazon Prime
Length: 115 minutes
Synopsis: Wealthy socialites take in, and are taken in by, a con artist
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: Will Smith, dialogue
What I don’t like about it: overlong, poor pacing

Review:
This talky play based on a true story stars Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing as moneyed New York socialites who take a young man into their home because he claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier and they want a story to tell their friends. Will Smith plays the young man in question with confidence and if occasional nerves show through, it’s hidden by his character’s quick-thinking lies. A perfect performance and the first of many times Smith has been robbed of an Oscar.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex

The Kings of Summer (2013)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Amazon Prime Video
Length: 95 minutes
Synopsis: Adolescents run off to live in the woods
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: funny, acting, themes
What I don’t like about it: not important or great, jokes misfire

Review:
A marginal coming-of-age comedy drama about three boys who build a house in the woods and then run away to live in it. They consider themselves men but they’re not as independent or grown-up as they claim. Captures a very foolish phase of adolescence quite well but makes for generally unlikeable characters.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, racism, extended scene of a rabbit being skinned

Out of the Past (1947)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: FreeVee on Amazon Prime Video
Length: 96 minutes
Synopsis: Noir thriller about a gumshoe whose past catches up with him
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: writing, twisty plot compellingly paced
What I don’t like about it: good but imperfect in all elements

Review:
A great example of overwritten, over-lit film noir, Broodin’ Bob Mitchum plays a mobbed-up private investigator gone straight, a young Kirk Douglas is the crime boss who pulls him back into the game and brings up memories of a femme fatale, Jane Greer, who may yet prove to be his undoing.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): smoking, violence