The Kilkenny Observer Friday 28 January 2022
27
kilkennyobserver.ie
Advertisement TV & Streaming
Check out this good sci-fi movie while still on Prime
4
thrillers to watch on Netflix
The second adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s 2005 novel, David Fincher’s 2011 thriller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is as heady, taut, and explosive as you would expect from the director of Seven and Zodiac. Daniel Craig (Skyfall) stars as Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced investigative journalist who is hired by a wealthy industrialist to solve the disappearance of his grandniece over forty years ago. During his investigation of his client’s family Blomkvist is aided by Lisabeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a taciturn hacker and the namesake of the film. Graphic, intense, frequently gorgeous, and thoroughly engrossing, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo easily ranks among Fincher’s finest.
WRITTEN by Carl Lucas and directed by Gille Klabin, The Wave (2019) on Amazon Prime is a fascinating sci-fi exploration of psychedelia. Frank (Justin Long) is a lawyer at an insurance company and a pretty good one at that. He just scored a major coup for his employer, looking through the details of a recently deceased firefighter’s case and finding a loophole to deny a claim that would cost the company millions. This firefighter had a heart condition and was taking medication for it, but bad side effects made him quit. In the insurance company’s eyes, he might as well have committed suicide. In 2020, Gille Klabin told Interlocutor magazine that the storyline “is actually based on the writer/producer Carl’s real life cousin,” who died and had their life insurance policy rejected. Klabin described the movie as “partially a vengeful fantasy of the universe fixing a moral wrong, but it was also an attempt to humanise and understand the person simply doing their job well.”
Despite winning over his fellow lawyer Jeff (Donald Faison) and being in line to score points with his boss, Frank’s life seems empty. His wife, Cheryl (Sarah Minnich), loathes him. So he throws caution to the wind and goes out with Jeff the night before his big meeting with the boss. Which leads to drinks, which leads to meeting Natalie (Katia Winter) and Theresa (played by both Jocelyn Montoya and Sheila Vand). Jeff is instantly smitten with Theresa, who calls him out when he tries to defend his job. She accuses him of not believing a word he’s saying, to which Jeff responds that he doesn’t believe she cares. It’s a fun, flirty scene, hampered only by Jeff’s inability to get away from his wife’s phone calls. The four make their way to a house party, then quickly become two as Jeff and Natalie get lost in the crowd. Frank and Theresa start having fun on their own, but Frank is cautious about trying drugs until he meets Aeolus (Tommy Flannagan). Women surround Aeolus, he dresses in elaborate coats,
and he has the best drugs. He offers Frank a bag of cocaine that makes him feel wonderful, and when the chance comes to take a drug that’s ingested through the tip of someone else’s tongue he jumps at the chance to make out with Theresa. But before he can really enjoy the high, the drug hits him just like Aeolus promises it would: like a wave. Frank suddenly finds himself alone and without his wallet. The party is over and he’s covered in household rubbish. Theresa isn’t around. No one at all is around. His phone is dead and he has no idea what neighbourhood he’s in. With his big meeting in only a couple of hours, Frank panics and races to beat the clock while also justifying himself to his wife. Frank eventually makes it to the office, where he gets to reveal his big plan for denying a firefighter’s family life insurance. But this drug is making time act weird. He keeps jumping from one location to another, and phone calls with a furious Cheryl
confirm that all his money is somehow gone. Trying to figure out why his life is suddenly falling apart, Frank reconnects with Jeff and Natalie. The three set about trying to figure out what Frank has taken, which leads them to a drug dealer. But Frank’s reaction to the drug is only increasing, and he keeps jumping in and out of time. The drug dealer doesn’t like this, and things only get weirder from there. It’s effectively confusing, but what really makes these sudden changes work is Klabin and VFX supervisor Patrick Lawler’s wonderful visual portrayal of the experience. Not quite cartoony, they show human emotions slowed down and sped up, heightened and damped, as coloors bulge and burst out of every corner. Klabin credits working on “decades of low budget music videos” for pulling off the movie’s unique look. An unusually personal scifi movie asking how willing people are to change their lives, The Wave punches far above its low budget.
Sex Education edges near final season NETFLIX’S Sex Education S3 was one of the most highlyanticipated releases of 2021 and gained huge viewership, earning the streamer massive revenue. Following the success of the third season and the renewal news regarding an upcoming fourth season, fans have been waiting to see what the show has in store. While the show deals with
a lot of raunchy yet educational stuff that might make a little awkward family binge session, the wide range of characters help heighten the emotional quotient and adds relatability to the show. Besides Asa Butterfield and Emma Mackey starring as Otis and Maeve, 26-yearold BAFTA-winning actress Aimee Lou Wood also plays the character, Aimee Gibbs.
Despite various misunderstandings with Maeve, she manages to forge a friendship with her, and together they become an iconic duo. In the third season, Aimee has a pet goat and attends therapy with Otis’ mum, Dr. Jean Milburn due to her struggle with intimacy. While Wood, 26, spoke about how she knew “basi-
cally nothing” about the fourth season narrative, she is admittedly “confused” about the story arc as the school, now sold to developers as informed in the third season, would now be “gone”. Much to the chagrin of dedicated fans, Wood has emphasised how the show will “have to come to an end” soon”.
Uncut Gems directors Benny and John Safdie’s 2017 crime drama Good Time is anything but. Robert Pattinson stars as Connie Nikas, a small-time criminal forced to scrounge up money to afford his brother’s bail after a botched bank heist. Connie’s journey is a road to perdition, leading him down the darkest corners of New York City to the seediest depths of its underbelly. The film is charged with the same manic, all-or- nothing energy that came to define the Safdies’ breakout hit, but here, it’s even more fatalistically tragic and perilous.
Martin Scorsese’s ominous psychological thriller Shutter Island proved a colossal critical and commercial success when first released back in 2010, and the appreciation for the film’s nuanced visuals and pacing has only continued to endure in the decade since. Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn as Edward ‘Teddy”’Daniels, a U.S. Marshal whose missing persons investigation at the film’s titular psychiatric facility quickly unravels into a descent into the darkness of his own psyche, ranks among one of the actor’s best, with the character’s final line transforming what was already an unnerving third act into one of the most chilling and memorable of Scorsese’s entire oeuvre.
Steven Soderbergh’s 2018 psychological horror thriller Unsane stars Claire Foy as Sawyer Valenti, a young woman who is involuntarily committed to a mental institution in what she suspects is an elaborate plot orchestrated by her stalker. Shot entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus, the film is tense and claustrophobic with visuals composed primarily of close-up shots that place stark emphasis on Foy’s frenzied performance.
