Chattanooga Times Free Press

Movies and the State of the Union

- BY KEVIN MCDONOUGH Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin .tvguy@gmail.com.

Netflix streams the new series “The Gentlemen,” created by director Guy Ritchie, and is a spinoff of his 2019 film of the same name. This version concerns the young Eddie Horniman (Theo James), the first Earl of Halstead, who inherits a vast estate from an aristocrat fallen on hard times.

He’s soon surprised to learn that the posh location comes with one serious stipulatio­n — a huge illegal cannabis-growing lab in the basement and all the dangerous characters that come with it.

Ritchie has made his career making highly stylized films exploring class and criminalit­y, sex, guns and balletic violence. Help yourself.

Another notable entry on Netflix’s vast heap of programmin­g, the 2024 dramatic film “Spaceman” stars Adam Sandler.

He’s an astronaut six months into a solo journey and he’s not doing terribly well. Isolation has played with his mind, and separation from his wife (Carey Mulligan) has made him worry if she’ll be waiting for him when he returns.

Deep in the grips of these anxieties, he begins conversati­ons with an ancient sentient creature (Paul Dano) said to be from the beginning of time who had stowed away on the space Station.

Directed by Johan Renck (“Chernobyl”) and adapted from the science fiction novel “The Spaceman of Bohemia” by Jaroslav Kalfar, it features an impressive cast including Lena Olin, Kunal Nayyar and Isabella Rossellini.

Along with Apple’s series “Constellat­ion,” this is the second metaphysic­al drama set in and around deep space to arrive in the last month.

› Another stylized head-scratcher, “Poor Things” begins streaming today on Hulu. Nominated for 11 Oscars, the 2023 film stars Emma Stone as a Victorian-era pregnant woman who throws herself into the river in suicidal despair. An intrepid surgeon transplant­s the brain of her unborn child into her lifeless body, resulting in a childlike and naive woman open to a series of experience­s.

An ensemble cast includes Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe. A highly stylized and eroticized meditation on the “Frankenste­in” myth, “Poor Things” has been praised by others with words like “bonkers” and “steampunk.” Help yourself.

› Paramount+ will begin streaming the 2024 musical “Mean Girls,” adapted from the Broadway show itself based on the 2004 high school satire written by Tina Fey.

› Martha Plimpton, now appearing in the HBO series “The Regime,” was among the adolescent ensemble starring in the 1985 adventure “The Goonies” (6:30 E!, TV-14), co-starring Sean Astin, Josh Brolin and Jeff Cohen.

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