The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Finnish body horror, Linklater top flicks
A collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s new on TV and streaming services.
Movies
The suppressed emotions and anxieties of a seemingly flawless 12-year-old girl gather monstrous proportions in Hanna Bergholm’s “Hatching,” a Finnish body horror fairy tale that is streaming on Hulu. In the film, young Tinja (Siiri Solalinna), whose mother runs the artificially upbeat video blog “Lovely Everyday Life,” hides a dead bird’s egg in her bedroom that grows unusually large and hatches a very metaphorical beaked beast. In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr praised “Hatching” for “poking holes in the gnawing fear of all perfectionists, especially girls on the verge of puberty, that the pretty veneer is hiding something ugly, or worse.”
If the radiant “Apollo 10½,” recently released on Netflix, reminded you of the warm and wistful pleasures of Richard Linklater’s deceptively modest films, a new Criterion Channel series will be a welcome sight. The channel is hosting a 15-film series devoted to the Austin, Texas, auteur, streaming films from Linklater’s Gen X-defining breakthrough “Slacker” to his years-in-the-making Oscar-nominated hit “Boyhood.” If you haven’t seen them, keep an eye out for some less heralded gems like the well-observed backstage drama “Me and Orson Welles” and the black comedy “Bernie,” with a tour-de-force Jack Black.
Sofia Alvarez penned two well-received Netflix teen romcoms adapted from Jenny Han’s novels: 2018’s “To All the Boys I’ve Ever Loved” and its 2020 sequel, “To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You.” In “Along for the Ride,” on Netflix, Alvarez makes her directorial debut. Adapted from Sarah Dessen’s 2009 novel, set in a seaside town over summer, it stars Emma Pasarow and Belmont Cameli as two insomniac teens who connect on moonlight walks.
Television
“Meltdown: Three Mile Island” examines the Pennsylvania nuclear power plant’s brush with disaster in 1979. The fourpart documentary uses re-enactments, archival footage, home video and interviews to detail what is considered the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history. “Meltdown” relies on the perspective of engineer and whistle-blower Richard Parks and members of the community that lived through the partial meltdown of one plant reactor. Directed by Kief Davidson (“The Ivory Game”), the docuseries is on Netflix.
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” offers another twist in the space saga that keeps on giving. The Paramount+ series is set during the pre-Capt. Kirk years of the U.S.S. Enterprise, when Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) commands the ship on its search for new worlds. Also in the cast: Rebecca Romijn as Number One, Ethan Peck as Science Officer Spock, Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel and Celia Rose Gooding as Cadet Nyota Uhura. Akiva Goldsman (“Star Trek: Picard”) wrote and directed the series premiere.
A documentary about Sheryl Crow is described as an “intimate story of song and sacrifice,” detailing her life and career through interviews with the Grammy-winning musician and friends and collaborators including Laura Dern, Emmylou Harris and Joe Walsh. “Sheryl,” on Showtime, includes footage from two decades of touring as it covers the obstacles she faced from sexism in the music industry, her driving need for perfection and struggles with depression and cancer. Her influential legacy and late-in-life motherhood also are part of the film directed by Amy Scott.