The Undoing, Utopia and Emily In Paris

    My Top Three This Week 

Greetings to all my semi-constant readers. In past years we have always said that November was the month of gratitude and giving thanks. I think we can add hope to this.I am grateful and hopeful that in the months ahead good things are coming. Christmas is on the horizon, but in the meantime I have some Fall favorites for you. 

1) The Undoing ( streaming on HBO Max) is only three episodes in and I cannot wait for the next one. This thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant as Grace and Jonathan Frazer a wealthy , happily married New York couple. She is a clinical therapist and he is a talented oncologist and they have a well adjusted son in a private elite school. But then her husband goes missing and a mother from the school is found murdered and her neat and tidy life is blown to pieces. Jonathan was keeping a lot of secrets from his wife and Grace is thrown into a whirlwind of deceit, a murder investigation and an illicit affair. Written and directed by David E. Kelley ,this is a ever deepening psychological thriller and Kidman is at her best as Grace and breathes life into every scene and Grant is fantastic as a smarmy doctor. Some other greats in this is the beloved Donald Sutherland as Grace's father and Edgar Ramirez as Detective Joe Mendoza. This is a high recommend .

2) Utopia streaming on Prime is a hallucinogenic acid trip in the best possible way. Members of an online chat room are obsessed with this graphic novel called Dystopia that features a young girl named Jessica Hyde who has been fighting to stay alive while her scientist father is forced to create world ending viruses ( too close to home right now, just wait)  for some very powerful people to keep her alive. The motley crew have become so entangled in the story and the easter eggs embedded that when a new novel is unearthed called Utopia and is being auctioned off at a convention they agree to meet in person and buy it. It turns out that Jessica Hyde is real, the story is real and people are being murdered to find her and get their hands on the pages from the story. This is one of the most gory, trippy series I have seen and it is riveting. There are some great actors in this. John Cusack, Rainn Wilson. Camryn Manheim. But some of lesser known young actors Ashleigh LaThrop, Dan Byrd (Cougar Town) Farrah MacKenzie, Desmin Borges (fantastic Ross Geller energy) and Sasha Bianca Lane as the unflinching Jessica Hyde. Christopher Denham is a standout  as Arby in this brilliant cast.

3) Emily in Paris is my favorite guilty pleasure. A Netflix Original created by Sex and the City's Darren Star and is the perfect antidote to all the chaos in the world. Emily (Lily Collins, who happens to be Phil Collins daughter) is hired to be the American counterpart for a marketing firm in Paris. It is the perfect fish out of water story - a midwest girl coming to glamorous Paris . She is media savvy and finds herself at odds with her new team and especially her new boss Sylvie ( the wonderful Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) who has no time for a typical American girl who speaks no French. She slowly makes a new best friend( Ashley Park-Mean Girls The Musical) and has some great flirtations basking in The City of Lights. Some beautiful cinematography and a wardrobe from Patricia Fields and witty dialogue and lots of eye candy make this a November binge. 

Bonus: I Am Not Okay With This has been sitting in my Netflix queue for a while. I decided to try an episode and I was hooked. Starring two "IT" alumni Sophia Lillis and Wyatt Oleff , this is the story of Sydney, a high school girl dealing with the normal high school drama and an unfortunate situation at home. She has some anger to deal with and it is coming out in an unusual way.She has a couple of big secrets and when the uncontrollable anger starts building things start breaking , trees uproot and people get hurt. She confides in a good friend and they try to figure out how much power she has and how to control it. This is a unique take on the super hero and I enjoyed it. Lillis and Oleff have a great chemistry and Sofia Bryant shines as her best friend Dina.

The Haunting of Bly Manor, Monsterland and Next

   My Top Three This Week 

Greetings to all my semi-constant readers. Welcome to my favorite time of year. The best time to rewatch The Exorcist and Hocus Pocus. The best time for scary stories, things that go bump in the night and raise the hair on the back of your neck. There are a lot of Halloween options to binge, cringe and pull the covers over your head and here are some new ones that I am enjoying.

1) The Haunting of Bly Manor from the team that brought us The Haunting of Hill House is a new mini series now streaming on Netflix. Based on the classic  book -The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, this is a different kind of haunting. Featuring several of the actors from Hill House this is the story of a young Dani (Victoria Pendretti) an American who is hired as a nanny for two unusual children in an English manor. After the mysterious death of the children's au pair and untimely demise of their parents,  Flora and Miles seem haunted, mournful and determined to frighten Dani. There is a great  sense of dread building with each episode while evil spirits roam the drafty old manor. There are some great actors in this series -Amelie Bea Smith as Flora and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth fantastic as Miles. Oliver Jackson-Cohen who played Pendretti's brother in Hill House is menacing as Peter and Rahul Kohil is great as Owen. Pendretti is always a favorite but  T'Nia Miller (Years and Years) as Hannah Grose almost steals every scene she is in. The perfect binge.

2) Monsterland a Hulu Original series is a anthology of  stories about monsters, some human and some definitely not. Each story shows us the place and a person on the verge of self discovery, destruction or an identity crisis. Serial killers, shape shifters and other creatures mix with human evil . Some of the episodes are better than others but there is some great casts including Taylor Schilling and the immensely talented  Kaitlyn Dever who appears in several episodes, each one with some great moody cinematography.

3) NEXT a new sci-fi series on Fox has a lot of potential and I hope that we get to see where this takes us. What if your Alexa suddenly starts having alarming conversations with your young child ,how would you feel? This series focuses on Paul LeBlanc ( John Slattery) who along with his brother invent a new A.I. called NEXT that self corrects and learns  to free itself from its confines in the lab and seems intent on taking over ... everything. It has the capacity to infiltrate car computers , cc tv cameras and an Alexa type device called Iliza created by LeBlanc's tech company Zava. Leblanc is kicked out of his company by his own brother and teams up with Special Agent Salazar (Fernanda Andrade) to battle this malevolent artificial intelligence.

Bonus: Vampires vs. the Bronx- a Netflix Original movie is the perfect 70s throwback about a community that is quickly finding its residents disappearing quickly as a large real estate company suddenly moves to the Bronx and starts buying and closing local establishments. A group of teenagers witness some brutal killings by a nest of vampires. This is my favorite kind of vampire movie- part comedy and part horror and all kinds of fun. 

Ratched, Filthy Rich and Woke

  My Top Three This Week 

Greetings to all my semi-constant readers. October is upon us and many of us are venturing outside to enjoy the last days of sun and good weather but the days are getting shorter and things are opening up just a little more but most of us are still spending many hours flipping through streaming platforms looking for something to watch. I just finished season 2 of In the Dark and if you haven't watched it check it out. But I am saving some favorites to share with you now.

1) Ratched on Netflix is an explosion of color and sound and is a sensory overload in the best possible way. Ryan Murphy has created a new thriller  series from the origin story of Nurse Mildred Ratched from the acclaimed movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The setting is 1947 Northern California coast with all of its sweeping panoramic views.His favorite leading lady Sarah Paulson is Ratched in the best sense of the word. She connives her way into Lucia State Psychiatric Hospital under the tortured brilliant Dr Hanover played by Jon Jon Briones, promoting herself to head nurse. She knocks all obstacles out of her way with glee including current head Nurse Bucket (Judy Davis - fantastic).She has a reason to be here which will soon become apparent as you watch but no spoilers here. The vivid wardrobe and quotable one liners make this binge perfect. Cynthia Nixon is incredible as a career woman who falls madly in love with Mildred in some heartbreaking scenes. Finn Wittrock has a key role opening the series in a murderous spree and and continues his reign throughout the show.But the scene stealer is Sharon Stone as Lenore Osgood who's mini-me monkey matches every dress she wears . More Sharon Stone please .... she needs her own show.

2) Filthy Rich  streaming on Hulu is the nighttime soap opera we might have been waiting for . Starring Kim Cattrell and Gerald McRaney as Margaret and Eugene Monreaux, a husband and wife powerhouse duo who run a very successful religious empire network.  They appear to have the perfect life with two perfect children. But when Eugene is involved in a deadly plane crash and is determined missing Margaret finds she has been living a lie. She discovers that Eugene fathered 3 children outside of his marriage- a drug dealer, a porn website owner and  an inscrutable young man. Margaret brings them all to her home to try to make a deal with an NDA to keep them quiet. Her money may not be enough to sway them and a battle for money ensues. Wealth, scandal and drama are the key elements of any soapy story. This is just fun watching.

3) Woke a Hulu Original is a heartfelt series set in San Francisco about an African American cartoonist named Keef Knight (the incredibly talented Lamorne Morris) . When an unexpected event changes his whole life trajectory , he becomes "Woke" much to the dismay of his publicist and fan base. But people are listening and what may have seemed like end to a career after a public meltdown may have just become  a tool to shape people's lives. Morris is so engaging as Keef that I want to see a second season of this series. The cast is great with Blake Anderson and T. Murph as his best friends but I have to give a shout out to the hilarious J. B Smoove as Marker.

The Rental, Relic and Lovecraft Country

 My Top Three This Week 

 Greetings to all my semi-constant readers.  I have been keeping busy rewatching some horror classics like The Lost Boys  and prepping for a great October. There is a definite Pumpkin Spiced wind blowing in and I am ready for it. Here are a few of my new favorites.                                                          

1)  The Rental available for rent now is the new horror/thriller from director Dave Franco and starring Dan Stevens, Allison Brie, Shiela Vand and Jeremy Allen White as two couples on a weekend getaway. They rent an isolated oceanside home and proceed to party, make bad decisions and suffer the consequences. One of the girls discover a hidden camera in the shower and things suddenly start going wrong as they become the prey for a hidden voyeur who is manipulating every move they make. Lots of tense unsettling moments and uneasy camera shots. This already seems sequel ready and I thought it was well done.    

1) Relic  - also available for rent,  is a super creepy horror film with a great cast. This off kilter haunted house film is about a daughter Emily Mortimer (fantastic as Kay ) who brings her young daughter  Sam (Bella Heathcote) back to her family home when her mother Edna disappears. Edna played by so well by the very talented Robyn Nevin, may not be in her right mind when she reappears home. Things move in the house and there is a presence in the house who seems intent on frightening these three women. The creep factor is intense and this reminds me of some of the best parts of Hereditary.

3)  Lovecraft Country on HBO is a crazy roller coaster ride of a series with never before seen characters and some of the kind of costumes and cinematography that you only see on HBO. Set in the 1950s a young Atticus Black joins his best friend Letty and Uncle George on a road trip through Jim Crow country to find his missing father.They encounter all kinds of monsters - human and otherwise. The underlying theme in all the episodes is racism  that is even more timely in today's environment.While fighting vicious monsters , Atticus , Leti and Uncle George discover an ancient cult of witches and wizards and a family legacy of magic. This is a fun watch and  some very talented actors. Jurnee Smollett is perfectly cast as Leti  and Jonathan Majors is fantastic as Atticius as well as Courtney B. Vance as Uncle George. Special mentions to Abbey Lee as Christina Braithwaite and Wunmi Mosaku as Ruby.

.