Our monthly round-up of the buzziest entertainment releases. This month: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Kinds of Kindness, and more.
Movies
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
‘The ghost with the most’ is back on the big screen. Thirty-six years after the original Beetlejuice, star Michael Keaton and director Tim Burton reunite for the long-awaited sequel.
The Deetz family returns to the town of Winter River after Charles, the family patriarch, dies in an accident. Charles’ widow Delia (Catherine O’Hara), his daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), and his granddaughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) are among the funeral attendees. The clairvoyant Lydia is now the host of the paranormal investigation TV show Ghost House With Lydia Deetz and is managed by her boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux). While her career is sailing along, her personal life is suffering — she has been estranged from her daughter Astrid, who doesn’t believe in the supernatural.
Astrid discovers a scale model of Winter River in the attic of the family house, which turns out to be a portal to the supernatural realm called the Neitherworld, home to trickster demon Betelgeuse (Keaton). Betelgeuse, who attempted to marry Lydia in the first movie, returns to wreak havoc. When Astrid is in danger, however, Lydia and Betelgeuse must form an uneasy alliance.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been called a return to form for director Burton, whose recent work has often been disappointing. Critics have praised the movie’s anarchic, irreverent energy and use of practical effects, as well as Keaton’s reprisal of one of his most iconic roles.
It Ends With Us
A worldwide bestseller, Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel It Ends With Us gained popularity partly through ‘BookTok’, the book-centric corner of TikTok. Its nuanced exploration of the intricacies of love — including sensitive depictions of challenging subjects such as domestic violence and emotional abuse — resonated with readers, and it became a word-of-mouth sensation. Now, It Ends With Us comes to the big screen.
Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) moves from Plethora, Maine, to Boston, Massachusetts, trying to get past her traumatic childhood, during which her father abused her mother. She has long dreamt of owning her own business, and she opens a flower shop in Boston. She has a chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directed the film), and the two fall deeply in love with each other. As the relationship progresses, Ryle’s darker side surfaces, reminding Lily of her parents’ tumultuous relationship. When he takes her to a restaurant to meet his mother, Lily discovers that the head chef is Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), her high school sweetheart. Atlas and Lily begin to reconnect as she is faced with the choice to stay with an increasingly violent Ryle or leave him.
It Ends With Us’ promotional tour has attracted controversy — firstly, because of a rumoured feud between Lively and Baldoni that brewed on set, and secondly, because of the tone of Lively’s interviews being perceived as inappropriately frothy given the movie’s heavy themes. Despite that, It Ends With Us has become a box office success, and an adaptation of the sequel book It Starts With Us is a possibility.
Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos has a knack for absurdist dark comedies, and his muse, Emma Stone, appears to flourish in the uncomfortable roles that these movies demand. Their latest collaboration, Kinds of Kindness, is an anthology film featuring the same set of actors playing different characters in a loosely connected triptych of strange stories.
In the first story, a man’s life is controlled by a rich man; in the second, a woman returns home seemingly changed after being lost at sea; the final story revolves around a sex cult and resurrection. As is the nature of Lanthimos’ brand of filmmaking, you won’t get much explanation about the meaning or significance of these stories, but they will spark a lively discussion post-viewing. In other words, Kinds of Kindness is strange, puzzling, and utterly compelling. Be warned, though: the director once again sneaks in gross scenes and vague undertones of misanthropy into his film, so you’ll need a strong stomach to sit through this one.
The film also boasts several great performances, including those by Stone, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, and most of all, Jesse Plemons, who scored a Best Actor Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
TV
Slow Horses S4
Who says you need labyrinthine plots or gun-slinging to make an espionage thriller work? Forget about the pyrotechnics or the outrageous plot twists — Apple TV+’s Slow Horses proves that great acting and even greater writing are all you need to make a tense spy drama.
Based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novel series, this darkly funny espionage drama follows a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in Slough House, a dumping-ground department of MI5, due to their career-ending mistakes.
After River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), an up-and-coming MI5 agent, makes a big boo-boo in a public training exercise, he is relegated to performing dead-end work at Slough House. He resents his new ramshackle workplace, which is populated by intelligence officers who have made huge blunders. Making his life even tougher is his boss, the curmudgeonly Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), who’s the brilliant but irascible leader of Slough House. Haunted by his past, River is often throwing himself into harm’s way to play hero and seek redemption.
Adapted from Spook Street, the fourth novel in the Slough House series, Slow Horses’ fourth season continues to ramp up the stakes: after an assassination attempt on the life of River’s grandfather, David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce), our red-blooded protagonist goes on a personal crusade to ensure the safety of his only remaining family.
Despite its name, Slow Horses never feels sedate. While it eschews frenetic plotting, the show still smuggles in plenty of suspense; almost every episode ends on a cliffhanger. That’s thanks to whip-smart and Emmy-winning writing that helps ground the espionage dealings with a sense of authenticity. Twisty but believable, serious but also wickedly funny, this under-the-radar gem is one of the best shows of the year.
Games
Star Wars Outlaws
Star Wars Outlaws is the latest video game released in the iconic franchise. This time, players are treated to the first-ever open-world experience in the Star Wars universe, taking on the reins as Kay Vess, a blaster-slinging outlaw from the galaxy’s seedier underbellies.
This latest adventure is set in between the chronological events of the fifth and sixth Star Wars movies — The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. If you are at all familiar with the tumultuous events that unfold during these movies, then you know that Kay is going to be in for a wild ride. Working under the cover of the civil war between the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire, and with her adorable pet sidekick Nix in tow, Kay finds herself about to pull off the biggest heist in the history of the galaxy.
Star Wars Outlaws’ world is immersive and gorgeous, its inhabitants colourful and diverse. Its gameplay prioritises stealth over running and shooting, but there’s still plenty of opportunity to go guns ablazin’ into several dangerous situations. It also gives you ample agency in dictating the story — you’ll get to choose which criminal organisation you’ll want to ally with or double cross. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable experience if you’re willing to overlook its weaker elements, such as the lack of interactable objects.
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