Month: November 2022

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: Nine 35-minute episodes
Synopsis: Hulk’s cousin gets powers, keeps being a lawyer
Recommendation rating: 1/5

What I like about it: Tatiana Maslany
What I don’t like about it: deeply annoying, uncanny valley CGI

Review:
The affected quirks of this show are so forced that they could inspire rage in a Buddhist monk. Our quirky lead pushes her way through the fourth-wall constantly, preaching to the choir with tired white feminism like a first-year women’s studies student. Occasionally she turns tall and green (still unbearably quirky!) and looks like a cutscene from L.A. Noire. Even by the standards of over-produced and churned-out Marvel timewasters, this is a bad one.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

The Serpent Queen (2022)

Where to find it: Lionsgate+ on Amazon Prime
Length: Eight 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Catherine de Medici plays the Game of Thrones
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: historical, acting, writing, costumes, soapy
What I don’t like about it: cheesy and pointlessly edgy, bad music

Review:
Stealing a medieval setting and gratuitous sex from GoT, its humour and camerawork from Succession and the obligatory fourth-wall breaking of everything else made in the 21st century, this show should be a forgettable and cynical prestige drama but it’s annoyingly better than the sum of its parts and makes for soapy fun if you’re into this kind of thing. The writing occasionally elevates it and so does the acting, especially Samantha Morton’s quiet, commanding performance as Catherine. Not unmissable but not a complete waste of time.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex, violence and gore, incest

Get Duked! (2020)

Where to find it: Amazon Prime Video
Length: 87 minutes
Synopsis: Four teens find a horror comedy when they take the Duke of Edinburgh Award
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: funny, politics, acting, editing
What I don’t like about it: the title (renamed from Boyz in the Wood) and the music

Review:
A group of teens undertake the orienteering challenge the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the Scottish Highlands. One of them, Ian, is here because the award looks good on a university application. The other three – Dean, Duncan and DJ Beatroot – have been ‘volunteered’ due to their part in a prank gone wrong. While Ian tries to bring the team together and the other three goof off, they are being stalked by a hunter who takes them for prey.

Has good jokes – especially towards the end when callbacks kick in – and a fun classist framework, a healthy disrespect for the police and tolerable lad-banter. Impressive editing and lots of beautiful highland footage makes up for its occasional weaknesses, making it less forgettable than most entries in the genre.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, dissociative VFX, scat, fur, violence (often sudden)

The Devil’s Hour (2022)

Where to find it: Amazon Prime
Length: Six 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Dark thriller
Recommendation rating: 1/5

What I like about it: gave me something to shout at
What I don’t like about it: relentlessly and despicably cruel to neurodivergent children, renewed for two more seasons

Review:
The initial interest is supposed to come from the “creepy” and “weird” behaviour of a quiet kid who doesn’t express emotions in the expected way. His parents believe he has no feelings and openly refuse to love him for the first two episodes, changing their tune after he’s kidnapped. His mother takes him to psychiatrists and demands that they fix him. She repeatedly says “it’s not autism” with no further explanation, in the vain hope that it will protect the screenwriters from this deserved criticism. Like in The Babadook, I screamed all the way through at the character I was supposed to be sympathising with for the tragedy of choosing to have children and expecting them to be easy.

Aside from that, it’s a boring British crime procedural with bad supernatural horror elements and risibly hacky writing. Hated it.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, child sexual abuse

Kevin Can Fuck Himself (2021)

Where to find it: Amazon Prime Video
Length: Sixteen 45-minute episodes
Synopsis: Sitcom wife tries to kill husband
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: comes from a good place with sincere effort, Patty
What I don’t like about it: format doesn’t have legs, unlikeable characters, never a good idea to give your show an unbroadcastable title

Review:
It probably wasn’t the best idea to create a television series solely to shitpost about the quickly cancelled and forgotten 2019 sitcom Kevin Can Wait but that’s what we have here. Fuelled by a righteous hatred of Kevin James, this show follows the “long-suffering” wife character in all of his sitcoms as she breaks away from his multicamera antics and into her own single-camera crime drama as she plans to murder him. The formats never mesh and the show proves to be a bad example of both, though it does make some good points about the sitcom character type of the pushy buffoon – “He’s not incapable, he just wants you to believe he is so you’ll pay his rent and bail him out for 30 years.”, along with “The world is made for men like Kevin.”

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, drugs

Wedding Season (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: Eight 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: Disney wasted their money, don’t waste your time
Recommendation rating: 1/5

What I like about it: serviceable pulpy murder mystery
What I don’t like about it: no likeable characters, bad plot, pacing and tone, just awful

Review:
Told in a confusing back-and-forth fashion, we see a romance between Stefan (a man with the screen presence of slightly-annoying wallpaper) and insufferably mysterious Katie, along with a murder investigation when Katie is suspected of killing a whole crime family. All of the above manages to take place at weddings. Providing extra comic relief are Stefan’s diverse friend group, who share a fury-inducing energy with early 2000s advertising. Nothing about it is worth seeing.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, sex, hanging

Sprung (2022)

Where to find it: FreeVee on Amazon Prime
Length: Nine 30-minute episodes (hour-long finale)
Synopsis: Ex-cons find lockdown on the outside too
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: funny, great characters, easygoing, messages, Barb, music, self-contained
What I don’t like about it: some jokes are a bit played-out

Review:
The latest sitcom from Greg Garcia (My Name is Earl, Raising Hope) focuses on Jack, who was locked up for selling weed in the tough-on-crime 1990s and released due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. With nowhere to go after so long in prison, Jack ends up staying with his cellmate Rooster and Rooster’s mom Barb, a petty criminal who threatens Jack’s long-awaited chance to go straight.

Its best moments come from dialling up the absurdity of the pandemic to show how it was extra strange for those released from prison to make space for social distancing. The wacky characters make for pleasant, fun and easy watching.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

See How They Run (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Bungled British Knives Out knock-off
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasionally a good line or funny acting, effortful (but too busy) backgrounds
What I don’t like about it: formulaic, obligatory, poor humour, poor mystery, no character, no heart, references to better movies

Review:
There’s a line repeated at the start of the movie which is indicative of the effort put into the writing: “It’s a whodunnit, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.” You can take them at their word and walk out there.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): murder

The Square (2017)

Where to find it: MUBI or BFI Player (both available through Amazon)
Length: Two and a half hours
Synopsis: Sluggish Swedish satire about pretentious contemporary high art
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: smart, can be very funny, beautifully framed shots
What I don’t like about it: too long, Nordic pacing

Review:
Christian is the curator of a top Stockholm modern art museum, housed in a former royal palace. He and his colleagues talk about their lofty artistic ideals and are regularly confronted by reality and how they and the world fall short of their ideals. It’s quite compelling and funny in a ghastly, cringe-comedy sort of way, explores ‘the Other’ and strongly rebukes the middle-class.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex

Wendell and Wild (2022)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: 105 minutes
Synopsis: Orphan girl seeks to raise her dead parents, gets conned by slacker demons
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: great characters, very left-wing, lovingly crafted, imaginative and cool
What I don’t like about it: story isn’t great, ending kinda fizzles

Review:
Henry Selick is a beloved stop-motion animator whose previous classics include The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline. Since the latter in 2009, Selick has had several projects disappear on him and relationships with many of the larger Hollywood studios sour but with the help and patience of Netflix and Key & Peele, we get to see another great film from a master of visual imagination.

Kat is a punky orphan who runs afoul of authorities and is sent from care home to juvenile detention centre to discipline-heavy Catholic private school. There, she meets the school’s perky Greek chorus and a quiet, capable and artistic trans boy named Raúl. Alongside this, we’re introduced to a pair of demons, the eponymous Wendell & Wild (Key & Peele) who live on a bigger demon and are responsible for replacing his thinning hairline. Together they resurrect the dead and fight against property developers trying to turn their post-industrial town into a private prison.

It’s very strange and honestly, confusing and hard to connect with at times but the imagination and fun pervading the whole movie – along with the dedication and craft involved in its creation = makes it easy to overlook the weaknesses and just be awed as it moves at a consistent fast pace and shows off some great visuals and ideas. Suitable for gothy older kids and teens.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, drugs and alcohol, grief and trauma