Play mystery for me
THERE’S PLENTY OF SMALL-SCREEN ACTION TO KEEP YOU GUESSING WHILE TUNED IN AT HOME
MOVIE REVIEWS
After a movie mystery to keep you on your toes from beginning to end? LEIGH PAATSCH has hit the streaming platforms in search of 10 recent titles with all the twists, turns and take-downs you need.
THE GUILTY (M) NETFLIX
Whoa! This here is the perfect embodiment of how to ensure a little goes a long way. All you’re getting from The Guilty is the making and taking of phone calls by Jake Gyllenhaal. And yet, as we work through the hurried, high-stakes sequence of conversations haunting the headset of Gyllenhaal’s hypervigilant 911 emergency officer, the dark mystery that unfolds becomes all-consuming for any willing, worried viewers. To unleash the full power coursing through this movie (a very faithful remake of an astonishing 2018 Danish thriller of the same name) it is best to stagger into its forbidding storytelling maze with next to no advance information. All you need to know is that Gyllenhaal’s Joe Baylor is a decorated cop who has been banished to desk duty for reasons not disclosed. A distress call comes through from a woman who has been abducted by a former partner. What has happened in the lead-up to this incident – and what could be about to happen – must be methodically deducted by Joe with the very limited means at his disposal. As each minute ticks away, who Joe speaks to on the phone – and how he interprets what they are saying and not saying to him – become individual matters of life and death. Intrigued? You should be. Totally riveted? You will be.
THE DRY (MA15+) FOXTEL, AMAZON, RENT
This top-notch adaptation of Jane Harper’s best-selling debut novel is finally beginning to pop up on streaming platforms after a recordbreaking run in cinemas last summer. Few viewers will not be engrossed, provoked and even somewhat shaken by the experience. Eric Bana plays Aaron Falk, a police detective who has returned to his hometown to attend the funeral of an old friend who took his own life along with those of his young family. Before he leaves, Aaron is asked to take a brief look at the details of this tragic case. A week later, he is still there, asking questions of people they would rather not be answering. Co-stars Genevieve O’Reilly, John Polson. Also airs ‘live’ on Foxtel’s Premiere Movies Channel this Sunday at 8.30pm if that ondemand stuff just isn’t for you.
THE LITTLE THINGS (MA15+) RENT ONLY
By conventional murder-mystery standards, The Little Things is not here to play by the rules. Or for that matter, play nice. The everdependable Denzel Washington plays Joe Deacon, an old-school homicide investigator who jumped off the murderous merry-goround of the Los Angeles beat some years ago. Now he is reluctantly back in the game, at the invitation of the man who replaced him in his original job, hotshot detective Jim
Baxter (Rami Malek). A genuinely gripping and unnervingly ambiguous thriller.
21 BRIDGES (MA15+) NETFLIX, RENT
A solid pulp crime thriller set across a single night on the streets of New York City. Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) stars as Andre Davis, a complicated NYPD detective with an unfair rep for being a bit too triggerhappy on the job. Almost as soon as Davis is advised to stop with the pumping of lead into crooks, two mysterious gunmen start wasting cops left, right and centre. Our hardpressed hero is given a single night to hunt down the perps and halt the carnage, courtesy of an unprecedented sealing off of the whole of Manhattan by city authorities. Co-stars J.K. Simmons, Sienna Miller.
I CARE A LOT (MA15+) AMAZON
Yes, the title is ironic. To the absolute max. The mega-manipulative Marla (a chillingly sinister Rosamund Pike) does not care at all. Which is why she makes such a tidy stack of dollars tricking the elderly out of their life savings. Marla might have the perfect front for her crimes – she is a wellregarded court-appointed guardian – but she is definitely heading for the perfect comeuppance when her latest ‘victim’ (a wonderful Dianne Wiest) puts a call out to a well-connected acquaintance. Just who will come out on top in a bottom-feeding battle of wills is almost impossible to predict. This is a mercurial, mood-shifting movie that won’t accommodate all tastes, but will not be forgotten in a hurry courtesy of a brilliant Pike.
THE LODGE (MA15+) RENT ONLY
An expertly constructed psychological mystery, more interested in crawling under skins than administering shocks to senses. Anyone knocked for a loop by the 2018 angst-fest Hereditary will be most taken by the quietly menacing momentum building from scene to scene here. The story centres on a family unit recently reconfigured by a sudden death. As a result, youngsters Aidan and Mia have a new stepmother, Grace (Riley Keough), they cannot abide, and a father that cannot be reached.
LOST GIRLS (MA15+) NETFLIX
A slow-burning investigative thriller based on a compelling and confounding true story. When the daughter of Mari Gilbert (Amy Ryan) vanishes, police drag their feet in terms of ramping up the search. Taking matters into her own hands, the heartbroken, yet indefatigable, Mari uncovers the work of a previously unidentified serial killer responsible for 16 other murders in the Long Island region.
TENET (M) BINGE, FOXTEL, NETFLIX
This notoriously enigmatic affair from filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Inception, Interstellar) is propelled by the concept of ‘time inversion’, where both the past and the future can move in multiple directions. Therefore it is left to an unnamed agent (John David Washington) to stop a wily Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh) from summoning a tsunami of evil from the future that could exterminate the present forever. A movie always blowing you away, and then doing you over. Costars Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine.
JUST MERCY (M) FOXTEL, RENT
A powerful, provocative and genuinely inspiring drama based on a true story. Michael B. Jordan stars as Bryan Stevenson, a young lawyer who turns his back on a lucrative career to mount pro bono defences of lost causes. Like that of a falsely accused black man sitting on death row, Walter McMillan (Jamie Foxx). The courtroom drama component of this solid production arrives relatively late but is well worth sticking around for, simply due to the emotional crescendo struck.
ENOLA HOLMES (PG) NETFLIX
Drawn from the popular books by Nancy Springer, teen super-sleuth Enola is the (much) younger sister of the Holmes brothers Sherlock and Mycroft. Played most vividly by Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, Enola’s debut case involves the baffling disappearance of her eccentric mother (Helena Bonham Carter). Our heroine must run away from home all the way to London, where a not-sowarm welcome awaits the rookie detective.