The Holiday Edition: New Views from the Big Screen to Home Streaming 27 December 2021 Recently in a Cineplex theatre I went to see Guillermo del Toro’s carnivalesque Nightmare Alley (B) which has tons of psycho-noirish atmosphere over its 150 minutes. It’s definitely lacking the Christmas spirit so be warned. (I had somewhat of a nightmarish time after as I got stranded with car engine failure.) In “Alley” Willem Dafoe has a small role as a creepy carny. That evening the “Crave” channel featured Dafoe in the lead role as a tormented soul in Abel Ferrara’s nightmarish 2019 psychodrama Siberia (C). If anything, it’s even more grotesque and ghastly. So bring on the heartwarming holiday favorites! As usual there is a vast amount of content being added to streaming platforms. Netflix seems to add another series almost every day. Worth checking out is the four-episode docuseries Animal (A) that starts with the predatory world of big cats. And speaking of large cats and the murde
New Views and Three Gems from TIFF 28 October 2021 I am woefully behind in posting reviews so will do a roundup in brief before noting several fine selections from September’s Toronto film festival. Starting with streaming platforms, Netflix keeps adding enormous amounts of content. That includes new seasons of “Sex Education” (B+, third season, 8 episodes) and the terrific Spanish-language thriller “Money Heist “ (A, fifth season, five of 10 episodes so far). In the case of the former the randy high-schoolers are played by actors in their 20s. (Lead character “Otis”, son of a sex therapist, is played by Asa Butterfield who is 24.) An excellent new drama series is Maid (A, 10 episodes) starring Margaret Qualley as the single mom of a three-year old daughter Maddy who ekes out a precarious living cleaning houses. It’s based on a real-life memoir. In terms of lethal action, the hit new series is the Korean Squid Game (B+, nine episodes) in which the financially dis