Welcome back to normal. how fun. You can finally stop sleeping too much, and use the day for the really important things – an hour on the road in each direction to the office, endless work with Zoom meetings even at night, and nutritious food from Walt. Of course we want some time off now, after we complained that it would be a bit boring between the Tishrei holidays, but that’s okay, there is also encouraging news: a lot of great series and movies have arrived on Netflix. It’s better, isn’t it?
After the protest in the UK: Netflix with a surprising decision
The luckiest girl in the world: Luckiest Girl Alive
Let’s start with the most important news: before us lies another amazing movie starring Mila Kunis, after quite a few of her romantic comedies and of course ‘Black Swan’ which stunned us already 12 years ago. ‘The luckiest girl in the world’, a thriller based on Jessica Knoll’s novel and to be honest also on Knoll’s own life, accompanies me.
She seems to have everything. She is young and brilliant, who is one minute away from being appointed to the position of editor at the New York Times, every journalist’s Mount Everest, and will soon marry her beloved and talented lover. The only thing I lack is a clean past, free of horrific traumas that threaten to break through and destroy what happens along the way. And unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Following a director asking her about a mysterious incident she experienced in high school, I will recall the gang rape she suffered during a shooting at her school, which left her scarred from all sides and mostly full of guilt for the way she acted. In an instant, like putting feathers in front of a fan, what she built begins to fall apart as if it never existed.
There is no doubt that this is a difficult film and full of triggers, warning in advance in white Kiddush letters. What differentiates the current film from another traumatic film that does mostly evil, is the strengths that I have even in the darkest places, and the ability to maneuver between the two extremes – that of the almost obsessive hiding of the past, up to complete transparency that does not hide the horrors that were on the way. While Kunis is always incredibly accurate, this time she just did it better than ever. Important update – you’re going to be left with a pit in your heart after the final scene of the film, and at the same time, you’re also glad you watched it.
The Watcher: The Watcher
If you haven’t been asked this week if you’ve already watched ‘The Spectator’, you’ve probably spent the past few days on vacation abroad. Congratulations. From the moment this short series arrived on Netflix, it seems like Ash in the Thorns doesn’t even begin to express the excessive influx to it. In most of these cases, it’s another A moment of both expectation and disappointment, but when it comes to a person like Ryan Murphy, it’s clear that there’s something to look forward to, literally.
Just a few weeks ago, Murphy turned ‘Dahmer – Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer’ into one of his most popular television works in the world, and ‘The Spectator’ was also made in his image and likeness, with all that implies. On the menu: a typical American family, Nora and Dean, married plus two teenage children. As part of the American dream, they decide to leave for the suburbs and a house with a garden, a decision that after a short time turns out to be terrible.
Well, accept the nightmare of anyone who has reached the age of maturity and understands the point: someone is following these four, and they realize that they are never actually completely alone in the house. And we are talking about the whole package – letters, pets that have lost all signs of animals and even neighbors that get into their veins in a really not funny part.
Sometimes you will think that you are in the kind of the beautiful and the true, a version of how to lose your sanity in a new house. As crazy as it is going to look, and I was gentle in my descriptions, you won’t feel like zapping. The next time you look at the sign you will realize that you have finished all seven chapters and that it is already two in the morning. For nothing.
Unsolved Mysteries: Unsolved Mysteries
And in the best of my tradition to praise Doku who manages to be seductive enough to get us out of bingeing on series regardless of reality, accept it. ‘Unsolved Mysteries’, as it is called, goes back to many rather horrific cases involving murder, crime, accidents, or just encounters between questionable people.
We are already relatively adults, we have learned a thing or two in life, so it is not impossible to ask the million dollar question – what is the catch? These events never came to a resolution that would explain what happened there. All that remains is some kind of her actions, a cover-up or simply an attempt to hide, when the truth is that these are lies.
Even now, at the release of the third season, which for some reason is arranged as volumes, the creators return to an unknown incident that remains unexplained, and this time with an athlete who was killed by a train near her home. And guess what? Still cringe, still skillfully done, and just as interesting.
Unsolved Mysteries: Unsolved Mysteries (Photo: Netflix screenshot)Sing: Sing
The series and movies I have chosen for you so far are not that simple, I know. Precisely because of this, we have reached a moment where we lighten the tense atmosphere a bit with something that is, in one word, cute, and in two words – really cute.
In the center of the stage stands Buster Moon, a sweet and optimistic koala bear who reached a good place in his life and became a theater owner. When he realizes that he must keep the theater in his hands at all costs, Moon organizes a young talent competition, and goes with the five finalists on a crazy journey of a lot of courage and also some not bad songs at all.
If you were skeptical until now, you’ll surely be happy to hear that Moon is voiced by Matthew McConaughey in his original version, (Zvika Hadar dubbed into Hebrew), and with him Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson and other hot names in the American swamp. 108 minutes of absolute fun, don’t give up.
sing (photo: Netflix screenshot)The School for Good and Evil: The School for Good and Evil
And they lived happily ever after. remember? This is how all the fairy tales that were read to us before bed ended. Usually there was a princess, and maybe a photogenic prince and a palace, without electricity and rent bills, without a car test, and without a job that you have to get up for at half past six in the morning. Just continue to live comfortably.
The ‘School of Good and Evil’, based on a novel of the same name, decides to take another step back in the course of events, and create a special school that divides the students into princes and aristocrats, versus villains and criminals. Sophie and Agatha, young women who are kidnapped straight to school, will later discover that the group they were assigned to does not suit them, and they will do everything to return home and avoid the terrifying fate waiting around the corner.
The idea is cool, I admit. He winks a little at our society, and life circumstances that turn one person into a star and the other into one who fails to break through any glass ceiling he collides with. The performance, oops, is reminiscent of an expired Disney movie that has been left out of the fridge too long. Even the fans of various kinds of fantasy will not find themselves in the seam between a fairly brutal youth drama and the overly exaggerated effects of the animation. If you like, the vision is good, what came out of it is very bad, trite and stressful. move on
The School for Good and Evil: The School for Good and Evil (Photo: Netflix screenshot)