Film

What Nat added to her streaming queues this week, including The Tragedy of Macbeth

All the movies added to streaming services in the past week that Natya has added to her watchlists and hopes to watch. But might not

Not such a big list of additions to my watchlist this week, but here’s what I really think might be fun or interesting to watch. I chose one from each service that most people will have!

Netflix

  • Emma. (2020): In 1800s England, a well meaning but selfish young woman meddles in the love lives of her friends – come on, it’s Jane Austen. You know this one! (Trailer)

Apple TV+

  • The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021): A Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he will become the next King of Scotland, and his ambitious wife supports him in his plans of seizing power – come on, it’s Shakespeare. You know this one! Plus it’s directed by Joel Coen (Trailer)

MUBI

  • Galveston (2018): Starring Elle Fanning and Ben Foster, this striking thriller is the English-language debut from Mélanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds). With hardboiled pedigree in True Detective creator Nic Pizzolato’s source novel, and a stunning one-take set-piece, Galveston is a prime slice of pulp fiction. (Trailer)

Disney+

  • The Last Duel (2021): King Charles VI declares that Knight Jean de Carrouges settle his dispute with his squire by challenging him to a duel. Directed by Ridley Scott and starring Jodie Comer and Adam Driver (plus Matt Damon) (Trailer)
Streaming TV

Marvel’s Moon Knight looks interesting, although what’s up with Oscar Isaac’s accent?

Moon Knight. You’ve heard of that particular superhero, haven’t you? No, I hadn’t either until Marvel decided to make a TV show about him. Thankfully, Wikipedia is our friend here:

The son of a rabbi, Marc Spector was a former Marine and CIA operative who became a mercenary, despite his conflicted feelings about violence and morality. During a job in Sudan, he was appalled by ruthless fellow mercenary Raoul Bushman, who then attacked and killed archeologist Dr. Alraune. After saving the archeologist’s daughter and colleague, Marlene Alraune, Spector was then mortally wounded by Bushman before finding himself drawn to a recently unearthed tomb for shelter and placed before a statue of the Egyptian moon god Khonshu. Spector dies, but is then suddenly revived, fully healed. He claims Khonshu wants him to be the “moon’s knight”, redeeming his life of violence by now protecting and avenging the innocent. While early stories imply Spector is merely insane, it is later revealed Khonshu is real, one of several entities from the Othervoid (a dimension outside normal time and space) who were worshipped as gods by ancient Earth people.

I’ve never read it, but from what my Marvel comic-reading friends tell me, hopefully we’ll be lining up scenes like this:

The show is now heading to Disney+ in March and stars Oscar Isaac – who apparently wasn’t totally scarred by the superhero business when he made the terrible X-Men: Apocalypse – and here’s the first trailer:

So clearly not what I read on Wikipedia. It’s set in London and there’s obvious bits of the British Museum on display, for starters. Plus there’s Oscar Isaac’s accent. Hmm. He’s getting stick on social media for that, because it does have a touch of the Orphan Blacks about it (interestingly, of course, the star of Orphan Black, Tatiana Maslany, is going to be playing She-Hulk in another Marvel TV show soon).

However, to be fair, the character does have dissociative identity disorder so that might not be his real accent – Wikipedia does say the character is American – merely one of his other identity’s accents (he’s Stevie, not Marc at this point), so that could actually be part of the plot. Which does happen.

Anyway, I enjoyed the creepiness of the whole thing and him being bonkers (or maybe not), so the more I watch the trailer, the more I want to watch the show, so it’s done its job, at least.

Film reviews

The TMINE multiplex: Good on Paper (2021), Doctor Liza (2020), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Incident by a Bank (2010)

In which Nat talks briefly about the movies she’s been watching this week for no particular reason and that probably don’t warrant proper reviews, but hey? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chatted about them anyway?

Heya! How have you all been this week? Get up to anything nice at the weekend? I didn’t manage to make it to the cinema, unfortunately, because honestly, none of the films really interested me.

I’d have quite liked to have seen The 355 (2022) – lots of famous older actresses, including Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger and Lupita Nyong’o get to be international spies, plus I’m always partial to Sebastian Stan – but my local preferred indie didn’t have it, which would have meant a trip to the (literal) depths of the Vue. Blurgh!

So I didn’t. Fortunately, the goddesses – bless them all – invented pubs and restaurants for a reason, which made my weekend pass very nicely indeed all the same!

But I have watched a whole bunch of movies, at least. More or less one for each of my supposedly regular screens.

In Screen 1, we have a Netflix original, Good on Paper (2021), which is written by and stars my favourite stand-up Iliza Shlesinger, and is based on both a real-life event and one of her sets.

In Screen 2, it’s Russian cinema time with Доктор Лиза (Doctor Liza) (2020), a biopic of sorts about real-life heroine Елизаве́та Петро́вна Гли́нка.

In Screen 3, it’s time to rewatch a ‘classic’: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), despite it being the bane of redheads everywhere for more than three decades now.

And finally, because I didn’t manage to watch Boiling Point (2022) as I wanted, I decided to take in another single-shot movie for our short-movie screen, Screen 4: Händelse vid bank (Incident by a Bank) (2010).

See you after the jump! But first, can I see your tickets, please? Sorry, is the app not working? Yeah, the WiFi down here is really bad, isn’t it? Soz. If you swipe… yes and then… is it not in your wallet app? Maybe your email? You know what, just go in, hey?

Continue reading “The TMINE multiplex: Good on Paper (2021), Doctor Liza (2020), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Incident by a Bank (2010)”
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Peacemaker, Pivoting, The Kings of Napa and Naomi

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

New Year, new shows. Hoorah! Life is good, even if the TV isn’t always quite so good. But I’ve tried almost everything out there, just to see if the lockdown has been incubating some good shows, ready finally to emerge onto our screens.

First, some regulars. Last week, we were down to The Book of Boba Fett, since we’ve pushed the pause button on Cobra Kai. This week’s BBF I actually liked more than the previous week, perhaps because there was less backstory and fan service than the previous week. The Wookie fight was fun and gosh, Danny Trejo showed up! Not so sure about the new gang’s Quadrophenia vibe, but it made for some amusing visuals at least.

More promising and more welcome was the return of Superman & Lois (US: The CW), the first season of which is now on BBC One and the iPlayer in the UK. We’ve moved a bit further along and we’re starting to look at some more interesting, more adult themes than we usually get from the CW’s superhero shows.

Sure, we still have the two sons and their dull romances; we also now have their ‘sister from another universe’ to deal with. But underlying all of that, we have Superman having to deal with the stresses on his marriage of both his sons and Lois’ issues, something prompting him to drink lots of wine with Lana Lang. We also have a more interesting relationship with the US government, with Supes being asked to swear his allegiance to America and being forced to decide if that’s something he’d like to do. By the end of it, if you’re not wanting Superman to be your dad, there’s something wrong with you – or you just have a very nice dad, already.

Usual quibble, though: for a show that’s a spin-off from Supergirl, which used to mention Superman more or less every episode nevertheless, how is that not only does she never get mentioned, there’s not even the implication that she exists? People act like Supes is the only Kryptonian in town. Nothing weird happened in the series finale of Supergirl, did it?

Thoroughly enjoyable and really, the effects on this are just superb for a TV show.

New shows after the jump: join me there to hear if Peacemaker (US: HBO Max), The Kings of Napa (US: OWN), Pivoting (US: Fox) and Naomi (US: The CW) are any good.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Peacemaker, Pivoting, The Kings of Napa and Naomi”
Film

There’s another Russian film festival no one told me about – Soviet 60s: A Turning Point in Cinema

Am I doing something wrong? Probably. I’m usually doing something wrong.

But at the moment, all I’m trying to do is promote film, particularly Russian film, yet no one wants to tell me about their lovely new Russian film festivals until it’s almost too late. Guys! I can help! I really can! Just let me know that you’re doing a Russian film festival and I’ll tell everyone else! I might even buy tickets and turn up!

The BFI was the previous “let’s not tell the Russian film girl about our Russian film festival” culprit, just before Christmas. Now it’s the Institut Français who’ve taken against me. To be honest, scanning their web site, they don’t seem to want to publicise it very much at all, so maybe it’s not personal — I actually found out about it through Russian Art & Culture. Maybe I’m being just a little bit paranoid? What do you think?

Anyway, I’ve got you intrigued now, haven’t I? Want to know more about it? I do hope so.

Soviet 60s: A Turning Point in Cinema

This will be a monthly film series at the Ciné Lumière (in association with Russian language film charity Kino Klassika) that runs from 18 January to 30 June and that spotlights “a selection of films from the decade that changed both cinema and the world: from beloved Soviet comedies to rarely-screened New Wave classics”.

Here’s the programme

After the jump, I’ll give you full details of all the films, as well as trailers and even a short TV programme about one of them. As you can probably guess, the trailers are all in Russian (and there’s an even an Armenian one!) so you might have to turn auto subtitles on.

Continue reading “There’s another Russian film festival no one told me about – Soviet 60s: A Turning Point in Cinema”