We recommend: The best new movies and TV series
F1: The sport is really having its moment, in real life as well as reel life! This one’s directed by Joseph Kosinski—best known for action films like ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Tron: Legacy’. It stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes—a former Formula One racer who had to leave the sport because of an almost fatal crash—and Damson Idris as rookie prodigy Joshua “Noah” Pearce whom Hayes is called in to mentor. With a new lease on life, Pitt is pushed to realise his dreams once again. A special treat for F1 fans: All ten F1 teams and their drivers in the 2023 season will make a cameo—plus Lewis Hamilton is one of the producers of the film.
Reviews are mixed. BBC Culture did not mince words: “F1 is simply a competently assembled collection of underdog sports-drama clichés.” OTOH, New York Times says: “‘F1’ is a reminder that sometimes, though maybe especially when you need a break from reality and its banal spectacles, some movies can still sweep you up and transport you to other far-out realms — a foundational power that remains, no matter who’s in the driver’s seat.” Our take: This one’s for the F1 fans and everyone who likes the thrill of speed. (We’re not sure if Brad Pitt has fans anymore.) The movie has been released in theatres.
Smoke: Taron Egerton—best known for ‘Kingsman’ and ‘Rocketman’—and Jurnee Smollet—of ‘Birds of Prey’ and ‘Friday Night Lights’ fame—star in this crime drama miniseries. Adapted by Dennis Lehane from a true crime podcast called ‘Firebug’, the series is about an arson investigator and a detective who have to work together to stop a pair of serial arsonists in the Pacific Northwest. Also starring: John Leguizamo, Rafe Spall and Greg Kinnear. FYI: It’s the second miniseries collaboration between Egerton and Lehane after 2022’s ‘Black Bird’.
Reviews are good but not great. Collider says “a few too many similarities to Black Bird might make it seem a bit been-there-done-that” but it’s “nothing less than a carefully assembled crime drama.” According to Rolling Stone: “‘Smoke’ becomes vastly more entertaining and complex the second that it turns all of its cards face-up. The cat-and-mouse game between the investigators and the arsonists becomes more fraught.” Our take: We’re here for the cast and the twists that make the series worth sticking with beyond the first episode. The first two episodes out of nine are available to stream on Apple TV+.
Ironheart: This mini-series by Marvel is set after the events of the 2022 film ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ and focuses on MIT student Riri Williams. She returns to Chicago and finds herself wrapped up with Parker Robbins or The Hood—the supervillain. But not to worry, Riri is a genius kid and she designs a suit that can go against magic.
Reviews are mixed. Variety calls it “a compelling story” but says “it’s also a lot of other stories at the same time, none of which is as focused or affecting.” According to Hollywood Reporter, ”As it stands, Ironheart simply doesn’t build right, starting flat and ending flat,”—but but but the reviewer also writes, “what sets Ironheart apart and makes the middle of the season so enjoyable are the character-based relationships.” Our take: The show might be intended for kids but Marvel fans can also find some delight in this spin-off. The first three episodes have dropped on JioHotstar.
Here’s a new chapter…
Panchayat season 4: The quiet village of Phulera is now a political battlefield. As panchayat elections draw near, Manju Devi picks the lauki as her election symbol, while Kranti Devi chooses the pressure cooker. As the two camps battle it out, village life is no longer the peaceful quirky world it once was. Meanwhile, Sachivji and Rinki’s romance simmers in the background, but does not get much attention this time around. Old characters like Vikas, Prahlad, and Pradhanji are back too—but their stories take a backseat as reviews say the show is “tedious” and doesn’t “translate into a riveting experience.” All episodes are available on Amazon Prime Video.
The Bear season 4: The Emmy-winning comedy series about the chaos of the fine-dining restaurant business is back! The new season starts right where it left off—with Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) awaiting the Chicago Tribune’s review of his new restaurant. Family friend and restaurant benefactor Uncle Cicero (Oliver Platt) has given Carmy and his team two months to make the restaurant profitable or shut down. Carmy’s staff includes fan favourite cousin Richie (Ebon-Moss Bachrach), Head Chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), her sous-chef Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas), and aspiring pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce). FYI: While reviews of the fourth season are good, they are the lowest-rated in the show’s history. All ten episodes have been released on JioHotstar.
Squid Game Season 3: Everyone’s fave survival show is back for its final season! The highly anticipated last six episodes of the series will bring familiar faces back for the showdown—between our hero Lee Jung-jae returns as Gi-hun aka Player 456 and the main antagonist Lee Byung-hun as Front Man aka Player 001. You can stream the episodes on Netflix.
Our MUBI recommendations for June
Editor’s note: We have started an exciting partnership with MUBI where the splainer team will bring to you three movies streaming on the platform that are personally vetted once every month! We’re no film reviewers, but we will share our honest opinion. The good news for splainer subscribers: you get a one-month free trial for MUBI! Click on this link to avail the free trial.
The Zone of Interest: This 2023 Holocaust-focused film—which won the Grand Prix at Cannes and the Oscar for Best International Feature Film—is directed by the English filmmaker Jonathan Glazer. It's a British production but the languages spoken in the film are German, Polish and Yiddish. The story is adapted from a 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis and revolves around a Nazi commandant of a Auschwitz camp Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their three daughters and two sons—including an infant. They live in a big house right outside the walls of the death camp. The movie shows the ‘civilian’ life they lead—impervious to the atrocities of their people.
Reviews are stellar. Empire Magazine says, “A striking, unforgettable exercise in absence, this is about what we don’t see — and what we choose not to see. The horror is unseen but underlying, and all the more arresting because of it.” Hollywood Reporter concurs: “The sickening blunt impact is heightened by the quotidian nature of everything going on around what we’re seeing, and the eruption of [Mica] Levi’s music that follows is like an alarm going off, reminding us to remain alert to the cyclical loops of history.”
Our take: Glazer has managed to break new ground on a historical period that’s been revisited for decades. Very few films expertly utilise the arts of sound mixing and editing to hit you with a deeply sobering message to the extent that this film does. But fair warning—if you don’t turn up the volume to the maximum possible, it simply won’t impact you as intended.
The Traveler: Released in 1974, the legendary Abbas Kiarostami’s second feature film centres on a football-mad 12-year-old boy named Qassem Jurayi. He lives in an impoverished neighbourhood with his mother and struggles to concentrate at school. Instead, he strives to make the expensive journey of attending a match in Tehran featuring his favourite team, Persepolis—by hook or by crook. The film follows his quest, teeming with social commentary on several issues, such as economic inequality, antisocial behaviour and Iranians’ relationship with the sport.
Reviews are good but hard to find—early career Kiarostami isn’t as widely seen as his work from the late 1980s onwards. Richard Brody in New Yorker says Kiarostami’s “incisive, sharply etched images reveal emotional cruelty and physical brutality at school, the burden of economic inequality, the enormous cultural gap between the countryside and the capital, and even the ambient pressure of police authority in the Shah’s repressive state.” Here’s what Geoff Brown in Times UK wrote at the time of the film’s limited release in London in 1998: “[Kiarostami] stares head-on, capturing the human drama in street scenes crammed with the kind of raw poetry that directors from the pampered West seem to have lost sight of.”
Our take: The first comparison that springs to mind when watching ‘The Travelers’ is Vittorio de Sica’s iconic 1947 film ‘Bicycle Thieves’—which directly dealt with similar themes and social commentary. While Kiarostami’s effort isn’t quite at the level of de Sica’s, it comes mighty close in driving home an authentic depiction of life under the US-backed Shah of Iran. And at 72 minutes, it’s a more accessible watch than Kiarostami’s later work—the perfect appetiser when diving deep into his filmography.
Twin Peaks: Co-created by Mark Frost and David Lynch, this TV series is considered iconic by film nerds and movie critics. The show is set in the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Twin Peaks and follows the murder investigation of the high school ‘it’ girl Laura Palmer (played Sheryl Lee). With the arrival of FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), the series begins to meander into eerie and supernatural tones while also showing detective work and the various interpersonal relationships in the town. The show first started airing in 1990—initially with 8 episodes in season 1 and 22 episodes in season 2, followed by a movie in 1992. Then in 2017, the series returned for a third season as ‘Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series’ with 18 episodes. Good news for splainer subscribers: All three seasons are available to watch on MUBI.
We’ve collected reviews from hardcore fans of the show. Scott Tobias in The Guardian recalls: “It was the one and only time I’d ever spend at his house, and I don’t recall a word spoken between us until it was over. It was like nothing we had ever seen on television, and like nothing we had ever seen in a theater either.” Talking about season 3, James Poniewozik in New York Times simply says: “[E]ven after nearly three decades, Mr. Lynch’s visual imagination remains inimitable.”
Our take: The show is credited with changing the visual language of television—introducing cliffhangers that have become the basis for binge-watching formats we see today and blending the supernatural with detective work seamlessly. For anyone watching it for the first time today, it is no ‘Mindhunter’. The series looks like it is from a different time (as it is inspired by the 80s and 90s soap operas), but it is definitely worth a watch for film enthusiasts and people who like multigenre content.
