The good, the bad and the scary
1922 (2017)
Available from Friday IT has been a memorable year for Stephen King adaptations, but some have been better than others. It is easily the best of the bunch and is now reportedly the highest-grossing horror film of all time.
1922 is King’s 131-page homage to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, with its own interesting textures: a farmer in rural Nebraska (played with wonderfully lugubrious authority by Thomas Jane) decides to kill his wife for financial gain and involves his son in the killing. He isn’t caught but eventually decides to confess to the killing, his conscience having slowly eaten away at him.
The central themes of the film are remorse and guilt. King’s novella focuses in part on an image the farmer can’t seem to get out of his head and, when it appears on the screen, it is easy to see why he can’t shake it. It’s a reminder of King’s current multiplex appeal — his biggest strengths lie in his unparalleled ability to build tension, create atmosphere, and tell a direct and brutal story.
The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story
3 episodes, available from Friday AUDIENCES worldwide were enthralled last year by the bizarre story of El Chapo, aka Joaquin Guzman Loera, the notorious Mexican drug lord who escaped from jail in 2015 and became the focus of the largest manhunt since Osama bin Laden.
El Chapo then appeared in the media via a clandestine interview by actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo. Penn was quick to discuss how it all came about but Castillo’s recounting didn’t have the same currency, until now.
It is one of the more bizarre crime stories of the social media age and Castillo plays the part of herself with some gusto. She was later investigated for possibly receiving illicit funds from the drug lord after the interview, but was never prosecuted and remains a popular actress in Mexico (and sometimes the US — she was in Jane the Virgin). It’s worth noting that Penn has recently said this is not how he remembers things but that shouldn’t matter to viewers who will still be entertained by this rollicking tale.
Haters Back Off, Season 2
8 episodes, available Friday COLLEEN Ballinger is like a one-woman Black Mirror. Through her comedy and music, she reflects and satirises the foibles of the social media age in a way few other performers can manage, sending up tone-deaf YouTube wannabes and narcissistic vloggers.
Her most famous character is the protagonist of Haters Back Off, Miranda Sings, whose channel racked up eight million subscribers in the real life YouTube. This young woman took the internet by storm in the first season with her mispronounced words, smeared lipstick and catchy ditties. However, toward the end of the season, she saw her family abandon her after a viral video caused embarrassment.
This season she rebounds from that and has her sights set on Broadway. It doesn’t always work but there are moments when it effectively lampoons some of the worst behaviours of fame-hungry internet stars, while never making Colleen herself less than loveable.
The Good Place, Season 2
8 episodes, new episode Thursday REMEMBER Highway to Heaven, the corny 1980s series about Michael Landon as an angel on earth? Well, this has moments of that, lashings of syrup leavened with a good bit of wit.
Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) is a recently deceased young woman who wakes up in the afterlife and is sent by Michael (Ted Danson) to “The Good Place”, a heavenly paradise he designed, in reward for her righteous life. However, she quickly realises that she was sent there by mistake, and must hide her morally imperfect behaviour.
The second series more or less revisits this same material, going back over the chain of events that opened up the first season, this time with a distinct knowledge of Michael’s true aims. The show widens out its frame just enough to show the tiny moments that, while significant, were carefully hidden before.
Bell and Danson have incredible on-screen chemistry and, while they don’t release audience figures, this is understood to have been one of the more solid comedy hits for Netflix over the last few years.