Wednesday, October 08, 2025

Seen in August and September


The Ballad of Wallis Island

Most of this summer has been non-stop packing and planning. Between boxes, hospital visits, financial maneuvers, and getting rid of what we didn't need, this is what we saw.


Murderbot

Murderbot SO1
Apple TV+
What if in the future, a security robot gained self-awareness, hacked its protocols, thus providing it the freedom to think for itself? Also, what if this bot knew it could kill any of its human bosses, but instead, preferred watching stupid melodramatic serial television shows? That's basically the premise of this futuristic sci-fi comedy adventure series, with Alexander Skarsgård as the self-named "Murderbot". It's a nice bit of fun and may make us ask what we expect from our own AI creations, though I doubt it.

The Ballad of Wallis Island
Prime Video
Charles (Tim Key) lives alone on a remote island off the Welsh coast and has seemingly organized a music festival that reunites his favourite folk duo, McGwyer & Mortimer (Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan). It quickly becomes apparent that Charles, a two-time lottery winner, hasn't organized a festival at all but is basically paying the two to reunite to play privately for him. Unknown to him is how the pair split up, and their reunion isn't as simple as hoped. It's a funny, odd little movie that makes you think about your own regrets, nostalgia, and sentiment of your own life, and what brought you to where you are today.

Agatha All Along SO1
Disney+
Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) from the WandaVision series gets her own show, where she wants nothing more than to regain her witchy abilities. She eventually convinces other local witches to join an impromptu coven to join her quest. Like WandaVision, nothing is quite as it appears in this show, and that's the fun of it, I guess. If you enjoyed WandaVision, you'll like this.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988)
Netflix
In lieu of seeing the most recent Naked Gun film (which apparently has brought silly fun back to the movies), we watched the 1988 version with Leslie Nelson as super serious detective Frank Drebin as he uncovers a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. How did I forget that was the actual plot of this comedy classic? I guess because the plot is entirely beside the point of this collection of puns, one-off gags, and absurd slapstick humour. Is it dated? Of course. Does it matter? It does not. Just enjoy the serious silliness.

Fortune Feimster: Crushing It
Netflix
Speaking of silliness, Fortune Feimster is a comedian both of our time and of classically apolitical humour. Despite being a married lesbian navigating a not always gay-friendly world, Feimster's humour easily crosses boundaries and brings you around to her point of view, and that's what makes it so funny and universal.

The Amateur
Disney+
When a CIA analyst's wife is collateral damage in a terrorist action that overlaps an agency conspiracy that provides support to terrorist groups who make convenient allies, he leverages that information to get his superiors to allow him to seek his revenge. Rami Malek plays Heller, the computer nerd who becomes a killer, in an apparent remake of a 1980s film of the same name. I won't say this is a great film, but it is fun seeing a nerd fight back in his own way. In many ways, this film is a bit dead on the inside, but it also has a bit of spy thriller fun. James Bond it isn't, but maybe a version of Revenge of the Nerds it is.


Part of the comedy is that Shaffer and Samberg look nothing like McGwire or Canseco.

The Lonely Island Presents The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience
Netflix
What if prime era "Bash Brothers" Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire not only smashed home runs, but also made an album together, and what if that album was an awesomely cheesy Rap, Hip-hop collaboration? Well, they didn't, but the good folks of Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone) made your dreams come true. From the crew who gave us the Saturday Night Live pre-taped classics like "I'm on a boat", "Jizz in my pants", and "Lazy Sunday", this is an absolutely ridiculous rap musical that imagines the "Bash Brothers" as a mid-90s rap duo.

The Grand Seduction
Crave
This is an English-language remake of a French film about a small fishing village doing its best to survive, hoping to lure a doctor to its community as a condition of winning a bid for an industrial facility promising work for almost everyone in town. It's cute, simple, and a bit of fun. Now it's been made into a musical with songs by Alan Doyle called Tell Tale Harbour, coming to a stage near you.


Part of the comedy is that the Thunderbolts look nothing like the Avengers.

Thunderbolts*
*The New Avengers
Disney+
This is kind of a funny take on the rag-tag leftovers of other Marvel Avenger movies thrown together as their own team. The main team members, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker, aka "The Other Captain America" (Wyatt Russell), and Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) have all been busy doing solo hit jobs for a nefarious American bureaucrat (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) until they are set up to take each other out. Instead, they team up and the fun ensues. This film never feels like a big-budget Marvel adventure, but also doesn't have the looseness and fun of the Guardians of the Galaxy. It's OK, but skip it if you find yourself wondering.

A Man on the Inside
Netflix
Do Americans make original content anymore? This is an English-language remake of an Argentinian comedy about a retired engineer asked to go under cover at a seniors home. Ted Danson stars in this show by the same people who made Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, but it never really finds its feet, and it also lacks a real reason for existing. Who hires a private detective to solve the petty theft of a senior in what would appear to be one of the poshest retirement communities of all time? It requires a little bit of "suspension of disbelief" to just forget the logic and enjoy yourself.


I doubt this cast thought they'd be in this kind of film.

The Thursday Murder Club
Netflix
Did I say the poshest retirement communities of all time? "Hold my Negroni," says this Netflix show. The setting is, in fact, the world's fanciest retirement home, where some of the world's greatest thespians (I mean retirees), such as Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan, have a fun little club trying to solve cold cases. On the side, we also have Jonathan Pryce, who seems to now be typecast as a senior with dementia. It's all a bit "Murder She Wrote" etc., but it's fun enough. Apparently, there are many more films to come. I'm not sure I'm along for this particular suspension of disbelief.

And September

Peter's Friends
Prime Video
From 1992, this is one of those films I always hear about but never find a reason to watch. It popped up and I thought, why not? Immediately, I discovered the film is set at Christmas, in a very grand British country home. Maybe I should have paused until December, but the cast is pretty impressive and got the better of my curiosity. Stephen Fry is Peter of the title and his friends are comprised of Hugh Laurie (the future Dr. House of "House"), Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh, and Imelda Staunton. They are all old friends and have taken up Peter's invitation to spend the holiday with him at his family home, which he had just inherited after his father's death. There's plenty of witty rapport, laughter, and tears as they reminisce and catch up. Thematically, the film reminds us not to take for granted all of those friendships we let go fallow. There are a few moments that don't age particularly well, and there is also some evidence that Kenneth Branagh is not always the best actor of his generation (worst “fake drunk” ever put to celluloid). In general, if you're looking for a less conventional Christmas film, this might be worth a look.


Blanchett and Fassbender lean in.

Black Bag
Prime Video
Stephen Soderbergh loves perverting a genre movie. In this film, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) and George (Michael Fassbender) are a married couple who work in some kind of intelligence agency. The only secrets they keep from each other are coded by the phrase "Black bag," and someone else in the agency knows that and hopes to use it to disguise their own activity. As Kathryn and George circle each other to find who in the firm is selling secrets, their loyalties are tested. It's a fine clockwork of a plot that adds tension right to the very end. There is a strange coldness to the two main characters, while those around them are weirdly messy, but that's the job, I suppose.


An assassin's progress.

The Assassin
Crave
Freddie Highmore is Edward, a journalist who plans to visit his distant and aloof mother Julie (Keeley Hawes) on a remote Greek island. On what should be a happy occasion of a wedding of a local couple, a sniper starts shooting the wedding party (which, now that I think about it, doesn't make a lot of sense). In reality, the shooter is trying to kill Julie, who, it turns out, is a lot harder to kill than that. How? Well, she was a professional killer herself. Edward, who has wanted to confront his mother about her seeming indifference to him and the identity of his father, is about to find out a whole lot more than a family tree. The show is curious and funny but also a tense, action-filled thriller. Most of us never really know our parents as well as they know us, and sometimes that's a hard reality to accept. Whatever you may think of your parents, you should occasionally remind yourself that no one ever loved you more.


I didn't read the books, but I assume the creators of this series did.

Foundation S03
Apple TV+
In season three of the series based on the Asimov books, both The Foundation and The Empire are on the precipice of complete collapse. I've never read the seemingly daunting books, but it’s my sense, the series pits the logic of science against the belief of enduring traditions as the basis for civilization, when in fact, neither alone are the core of our societies, but some blend of them. That's my uneducated guess. This series hopes to do for sci-fi what Game of Thrones did for fantasy, and whether you like the show or not, it's hard not to enjoy the sumptuous production quality.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster is my Muse,
American Masters
PBS YouTube
It took thirteen years for Art Spiegelman to write his parents' Holocaust survival story, the two-part graphic novel/comic, "Maus". In doing so, he legitimized the art of the comic book as not a "genre" of literature but a unique "medium" of its own. Yet, it took a literary award, the Pulitzer, to do so. Ironic. Creating Maus broke Spiegelman for a while. He found himself working in his own shadow until another disaster shook him to create another compelling work. This episode of the PBS series American Masters reveals the unusual practice of creating comics, and it can take an entire career to produce a masterpiece.

Octet
Crow's Theatre
A choral musical set in a church basement with a support group for digital addiction, this show explores the dangers and struggles of online addictions. It does so through a myriad of harmonious and innovative choral arrangements. The music and vocal performances were amazing, but the only thing the play lacked was any sort of resolution. Live in the present, and every day is a gift, I suppose?


Tim Robinson doing Tim Robinson things.

Friendship
Hoopla
If you’re familiar with Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, then this film about a man who thinks he’s made an adult friendship with a neighbour will seem familiar. Robinson plays Craig, who meets his new neighbour, Austin, Paul Rudd, when a parcel is accidentally delivered to the wrong address. The first few days of this new friendship seem golden, a dream really, as we all know how difficult it is to make new friends as adults, especially for men. Then, in a moment of weirdness only Tim Robinson could muster, it's all over. Craig's spiral of self-inflicted shame is sometimes hard, but mostly fascinating to watch.

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