Netflix
Film: Annihilation (US, 2018) by Alex Garland – out 12 March
With the comic book superhero tidal wave, Hollywood has largely lost its aptitude for science fiction. But Alex Garland’s third feature as director bucks the trend. Natalie Portman stars as Lena, a grieving biologist in a team of women venturing into “the shimmer” – a strange rainbow, and possibly extraterrestrial, field of energy that has swallowed an area of coastline somewhere in the United States. Lena’s soldier husband (Oscar Isaac) was a member of a prior failed investigative mission into “the shimmer” and inside the mysterious zone Lena finds an overgrown rainforest teeming with impossible cross-pollinated corruptions of genetic forms – different flowers stemming from the same branch, alligators with the concentric rings of shark teeth. Garland’s feature combines science fiction with horror elements, putting really magical CGI to the service of its big ideas about the next wild steps of evolution. Despite its Australian debut on a streaming service, Annihilation is a big film of theatrical ambitions, surging with conceptual and visual energy.
Film: Barry Lyndon (US/UK, 1975) by Stanley Kubrick – out now
A period piece set in mid 1700s Europe, Stanley Kubrick’s classic Barry Lyndon becomes a study of the spiritual cost of social mobility. The pace is so slow and enveloping, that you fall into, rather than become overwhelmed by, the breaking tragedy of its protagonist as he gracelessly climbs from Irish poverty to wealthy nobility. The film is beautifully and carefully put together, with many scenes shot entirely by candlelight, others capturing the texture of soft European daylight and some even modelled on 18th-century oil paintings. Whether you love or hate The Killing of a Sacred Deer (reviewed below, out on Dendy Direct later this month), here’s a great chance to see the origins of much of its cinematographic references.
Film: Ricki and the Flash (US, 2015) by Jonathan Demme – out 3 March
The late Jonathan Demme directs a script by Diablo Cody about the failures of one woman’s youth that return to haunt her later in her life. Meryl Streep radiates joy in the kind of role that would, in a more conventional film, be conceptualised as a man’s – a rock star who abandoned her family for her flailing career and now has to face up to it all, while Mamie Gummer (Streep’s real-life daughter) burns with resentment as the long-neglected child. If you’re a sucker for Streep singing on screen, this is a really enjoyable and sweet film, attentive to the most humane and tiny dramas of ordinary people’s lives.
TV: Love, season 3 (US, 2018) by Judd Apatow, Lesley Arfin and Paul Rust – out 9 March
No screeners were available for the third and final season of Love. But the first two seasons of this Judd Apatow-produced comedy were so beautifully attuned to the impossibility of happy Hollywood endings and the attractions of oddball opposites, that the newest stretch of the long and complicated relationship at its centre should be well worth following. Last season, sex/love addict Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and sweetly hopeless man-boy Gus (Paul Rust) defined what they meant to each other once and for all and pledged themselves to a fully committed adult relationship. It seems unlikely the plot will deliver a pat conclusion, just another step in its central anti-couple’s wonderfully windy road to nowhere.
Honourable mentions: 9 to 5, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Zoolander (films, out now).
Stan
TV: UnReal, season 3 (US, 2018) – new episodes on Tuesdays
What if the bachelorette at the centre of a TV dating show refused to play the game or swallow her integrity? It’s a brilliant premise for the third season of satirical comedy UnReal, which unmasks the manipulative tactics used by reality TV producers. The first episode ripples with spiky dialogue (“If you kiss the short guy, you get America rooting for you”), a reminder that, with its wonderfully overblown storylines, corporate villainy and slow-motion closeups, UnReal has become a great soap opera in its own right.
Honourable mentions: Ghostbusters, Jerry Maguire, Men in Black, Taxi Driver, Inside Llewyn Davis, Behind the Candelabra (films, out now), A Few Good Men (film, 3 March), The Games (TV, seasons 1-2, 8 March), Elysium (film, 15 March), Philadelphia (film, 17 March), Stand by Me (film, 24 March).
Dendy Direct
Film: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Ireland/UK/US, 2017) by Yorgos Lanthimos – out 21 March
Greek arthouse auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’s contemporary take on a Greek myth sees the tranquil family life of a complacent, affluent patriarch (the quietly brilliant Colin Farrell as a soft, paunchy heart surgeon who has become used to playing God) overthrown by a teenager (Dunkirk’s Barry Keoghan) seeking vengeance for his own father’s death. It’s this central power dynamic between a man and a youth on the brink of manhood that triggers all the film’s rich ideas: the failure of the west, the breakdown of the nuclear family, old-school Freudian sexual humiliation. But it’s Nicole Kidman as Farrell’s wife who really owns the film: as a determined woman realising the inadequacy and weakness of her partner, she brings genuine compassion to this brutal fable of patriarchal downfall.
Foxtel Now
Film: Face/Off (US, 1997) by John Woo – out 24 March
Devoted family man, FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta), loses his son when uber-sociopath Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) tries to murder him. Years later, Archer has a chance to foil Troy’s latest plan, but only by doing the unthinkable: inhabiting the face of the criminal genius who killed his own son, to infiltrate Troy’s terror cell. More than 20 years after its debut, Hong Kong director John Woo’s third Hollywood film still stands up as a glorious soapie-meets-sci-fi-action masterpiece. That the plot is utterly implausible is central to the film’s success and sense of joy. Every little bit is packed with thought, excess, fireworks and spectacle: a big-budget action flick crafted with passion and love, rather than cynicism and cinematic incompetence.
Honourable mentions: The Princess Bride, The Trip to Italy (films, out now), Grand Budapest Hotel (film, 21 March), Saturday Night Fever (film, 31 March).
ABC iView
TV: Love Bites (Australia, 2018) – out now
Made with much love and care, and streamed in time for Mardi Gras, Love Bites is a series of 10 short LGBT documentaries linked to something much bigger: life outside the shadow of heteronormative culture. The Only Different episode is a highlight – a queer family portrait in which a son tells his mum’s story through interviews and home video. Love Bites airs at a timely moment – it’s nice to think of this kind of personal storytelling as part of the national healing following last year’s traumatic path to marriage equality.
SBS On Demand
TV: Atlanta: Robbin’ Season (US, 2018) by Donald Glover – weekly episodes from 2 March
Previews of season two of Donald Glover’s multi-narrative, spectacle-free, surrealist sitcom, taking on life in the United States, weren’t available for review. But you don’t need another white person’s perspective on it anyway. Here’s what Glover himself had to say about what he wants viewers to take away: “I want them to really experience racism, to really feel what it’s like to be black in America. People come to Atlanta for the strip clubs and the music and the cool talking, but the eat-your-vegetables part is that the characters aren’t smoking weed all the time because it’s cool but because they have PTSD – every black person does. It’s scary to be at the bottom, yelling up out of the hole, and all they shout down is ‘Keep digging! We’ll reach God soon!’”
Film: Postcards from the Edge (US, 1990) by Mike Nichols – out 5 March
You can hear Carrie Fisher’s knife-edged voice in every throwaway line of dialogue in this comedic-drama version of the actor-writer’s autobiographical tour through addiction. The script is by Fisher herself, while Meryl Streep plays the Carrie-esque figure of Suzanne Vale, an alcoholic constantly battling her hypercritical, super-glamorous ageing Hollywood actress mother (Shirley MacLaine). The story begins with Suzanne having her stomach pumped, then falling for a sleazy actor (Dennis Quaid), flipping in and out of hospital and AA, and moving towards some kind of bittersweet redemption. Postcards from the Edge is not exactly a great film, but how lovely it is to hear and see Fisher’s words live again: “Thank God I got sober now so I can be hyperconscious for this series of humiliations!”
Honourable mentions: Carol, Le Havre (films, out now), Redfern Now season 1 (TV, 22 March).
Google Play & iTunes
TV: Catastrophe, season 3 (UK, 2017) – out now
Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s wonderfully hard-edged comedy has, weirdly, evaded the attention it deserves in Australia. The subject of this much-awarded British sitcom is of the ever-mysterious and unknowable nature of your own partner as you survive a long-term relationship. Sharon and Rob get to know each other through the project of parenthood, after deciding to go ahead with a pregnancy resulting from a week-long fling. Season one saw their relationship – and friendship – bloom as they decided to leap into marriage. Season two saw their truly nasty sides emerge as they hovered on the brink of breaking up. And now season three sees them, in middle age with two children under three, both careening into really life-ruining decisions. Rob’s an alcoholic emotional eater who gleefully resorts to name-calling in the most mundane argument; Sharon’s a great mother but the kind of terrible partner who’ll get so drunk she can’t even remember if she’s cheated. Carrie Fisher, in her final performance, plays Rob’s toxic mother – a glorious parent-in-law creation. With its perverse insights into relationships, delusion and self-destructiveness, Catastrophe gets both funnier and grimmer with each season.
Amazon Prime Video
TV: The Looming Tower (US, 2018) – out now
A new small wave of spy dramas are re-evaluating the US’s own role in failing to stop the 9/11 disasters and the ceaseless war that has followed. The Looming Tower, based on the Pulitzer prize-winning exposé of the same name by Lawrence Wright, is well worth a look. As with Berlin Station on SBS On Demand, this miniseries is talky and dense, and the material is fascinating for politics junkies: it’s based on journalistic accounts of the rivalry between the counter-terrorism divisions of the CIA and the FBI that may have contributed to the 2001 attacks, as well as the early development of al-Qaida. The series expertly weaves real footage (for example US TV interviews with Osama bin Laden) into its fictional universe, with its most subversive plot line centring on an Arabic-speaking Muslim American counter-terrorism agent (played by Tahar Rahim) who warned his tone-deaf agency of growing threats. Also featuring Jeff Daniels, Alec Baldwin and Peter Sarsgaard.