Tag: 5

Fantasmas (2024)

Where to find it: NowTV
Length: Six 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: Surreal queer sketch show
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: artful, satirical, anti-capitalist, incredibly imaginative
What I don’t like about it: hit-and-miss (like all sketch shows)

Review:
Julio Torres’ comedy series follows him through a dreamlike plot, filmed on a soundstage with sets inspired by German Expressionism and Dogme 95, interrupted by surreal overlong sketches and amazingly considered characters. Torres is a fantastic comic actor, making us laugh with only his fingers. He gets the best out of all his collaborators and the outcome is a real work of art about compromise, modern society and growing up. Weird and often awkward but self-contained and fascinating, it’s the best thing I’ve seen in a couple of years.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Such Brave Girls (2023)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Six 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Pitch dark sitcom about personality disorders
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: brilliantly funny, well-informed and acted
What I don’t like about it: the envy I feel over how genius it is

Review:
Josie has just got out of inpatient psychiatric care and is back living with her mum Deb and sister Billie, the driving forces behind Josie’s very low self-esteem and lack of stable identity. Narcissistic Deb is dating a widower for his money and Billie is desparate to find a man who won’t leave her like their dad did.

It feels like therapeutic shitposting and every laugh – which thanks to the tight script and comedic gestures of the actors come thick and fast – is tinged with an “ooof that’s dark”. It’s scarily relatable and fantastic work from writer-star Kat Sadler.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): some of the least erotic sex on television, bodily fluids, unhealthy relationships

Scavengers Reign (2023)

Where to find it: Not yet streaming in the UK
Length: Twelve 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Exceedingly imaginative animated sci-fi
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: immersive, imaginative, well-written, intricate animation
What I don’t like about it: brutal, some of the voice acting

Review:
An animated science-fiction drama for adults, this show finds spaceship crew members stranded on a hostile and confusing alien world. Though it’s easy to see their anime (Miyazaki, Kon, Otomo) and philosophical sci-fi (Annihilation) influences, they blend them well to create an engaging universe and story and even manage to explore themes of existentialism, morality and human nature along the way. Particularly well-suited for a binge-watch.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): gore, body horror, violence, swears

Rap Shit (2022)

Where to find it: No UK streaming
Length: Eight 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: Odd couple form a rap duo
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: great comedy in first half, great drama in second; knows itself well
What I don’t like about it: Instagram gimmick feels forced (but is used less as the series goes)

Review:
Shawna is an independent conscious hip hop artist. She was briefly signed to a big-shot producer but after refusing to compromise her artistic vision for commercial success, she is now working in a Miami hotel and posting topical political raps to an Instagram audience of a dozen people. She reconnects with her old friend Mia, a confident beautician and dancer, and convinces her to start a rap duo after they drunkenly freestyle. The two are opposites in many ways: Mia is outgoing and likes dancing to popular rap with her friends in clubs, Shawna sits alone in her apartment ranting about how popular rap is vapid. They attempt to overcome this and find fame with the help of a hustling local pimp and Shawna’s sideline in credit card fraud.

The show is really funny and its biggest strength is that it doesn’t make a single concession for a broader audience: this is a show by and for Black women, not one line is wasted on awkward exposition and although I’m outside of that target audience, I found it much better for it. It has great satire on the rap game and its portrayal of chasing fame in that field seems cynically realistic (the show is loosely based on City Girls, who also consult).

Content notes (may contain spoilers): explicit sex, sex work, drugs

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):

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

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

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

Sorry to Bother You (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: Rent on Amazon (sometimes on iPlayer)
Length: 110 minutes
Synopsis: Surreal social comedy about ‘hustle culture’ and labour relations
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: radical, hilarious, cool
What I don’t like about it: gets weird

Review:
The Coup frontman and avowed communist Boots Riley makes his directorial debut with this parable of modern life. LaKeith Stanfield plays Oakland telemarketer Cash Green (*smirk*) who finds a secret that improves his job performance and splits his loyalties away from his less-successful friends, who are organising a union. Things come to a head when he ingratiates himself with his Silicon Valley CEO and sees life from his perspective. It’s absurd from early on and gets so surreal at the end that it’s all people tend to remember of the film if they don’t get it, but it’s genius.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, body horror

The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 (2011)

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: YouTube (may not be the best copy)
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Documentary on the Black Power movement
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: great film, great subject
What I don’t like about it: it’s not narrative, more a meditation

Review:
Through the years featured in the title, a Swedish documentary crew toured the United States, interviewing figures involved in the Black Power movement – including Angela Davis, Kwame Ture and Huey Newton – for a sympathetic television documentary back home. Here, this footage is raided and assembled with modern-day voiceovers from Angela Davis, Talib Kweli and Questlove, among others. The intimate access gotten by the Swedes makes this unmissable – see an extended prison interview with Davis, Ture burning his draft card and a class of Black Panther children turning Wilson Pickett’s Land of a Thousand Dances into an anti-police resistance chant.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): racism, violence, guns