By: Henry J. Fromage –
This was a Netflix kind of week, I suppose, as I caught their buzziest new release, American and Korean, plus those ever-present docs.
295. Apex
Straight-to-Netflix vets Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton face off in this wilderness/serial killer survival thriller in which Theron kayaks in the remote Australian boonies only to find something more dangerous than the indigenous wildlife- a psychotic shaved-headed Egerton. It’s a taut and nasty little thriller full of bone-crunching impacts , beautiful mostly natural vistas, and creepy-ass characters details, even if it doesn’t quite go anywhere particularly unexpected. Moral of the story: don’t go climbing with Charlize Theron (don’t worry, this is only a spoiler if you don’t know how movies work). Three Beers.
296. Humint
The title of this slick new Netflix Korean thriller stands for ‘human intelligence’, and as you may expect, it’s a spy story. A South Korean agent and his team are investigating a North Korean drug and prostitution ring operating in Vladivostok, Russia. The action choreography and cinematography is superb, but the story is pretty rote, all past regrets, bleached blond sociopaths, and both sides love triangles. I could have done with more of the former and a bit less of the latter, but the final act brings them more into balance. Three Beers.
297. Leaving Neverland II: Surviving Michael Jackson
With Michael hitting theaters recently, the child molestation allegations against him that film apparently chickens out of depicting are resurfacing as well- in particular those of Wade Robson and James Safechuck as documented unforgettably in Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland. Well, unbeknownst to me, that film was pulled from Max after it debuted (I guess I caught it the short time it was on the service) and is unavailable anywhere. What is, is this short update on Robson and Safechuck’s attempts to get legal remedy against Jackson’s estate, with a trial set for this November. I recommend brushing up on this before watching the glossy, sanitized Hollywood version of Michael’s life story- the man was a genius, but also a monster, something nobody serious can walk away from Robson and Safechuck’s testimony without knowing deep in the pit of their stomach. Two Beers.
298. American Godfathers: The Five Families
This Netflix documentary series straightforwardly recounts the many power struggles of the principal Mafia families of New York, from their initial organizing together in the 1930s to their meteoric criminal rise and then gradual downfall as internal conflict weakened their bonds and made them vulnerable to other criminal outfits and the new RICO statue-emboldened Law. It’s as slick an overview as you can ask for, but rarely transcends that designation. Three Beers.
299. Evil Lives Here: My Child the Killer
If I’m not scraping the bottom of the bucket, I’m getting close. This Investigation Discovery show examines murder cases from the perspective of the parents who raised the killer. It is a perspective that is usually only lightly if ever touched on in true crime media, but there’s only so many ways to say “I ask myself every day what I did wrong to produce a child who would do this”. At least, that’s basically the entire first episode, and thankfully it deepens a bit in subsequent episodes, but I don’t expect it can sustain a whole documentary series for long. Four Beers.
300. Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill
Netflix’s superb crime-meets-sports documentary series continues dropping great feature-length installments this season. This one examines the curious case of a horseback riding feud that spiraled into the near-fatal shooting of Lauren Kanarek by ex-Olympian Michael Barisone. It’s the kind of story where both narrators are unreliable as fuck, and seem even more so the deeper into the details we get. Don’t be a psycho on social media towards people, but also don’t shoot people in the chest and then pretend you’re crazy to get off, either. Two Beers.
301. Untold: Chess Mates
This installment examines the infamous chess match between World Number One Magnus Carlsen and brash young American Hans Niemann, in which the latter shocked the world with an upset win. Carlsen intimated right after that Niemann must have cheated, initiating a scandal that would see Niemann admitting to cheating on Chess.com as a teen and get hammered with questions about whether he used radio-controlled anal beads to cheat apropos of pretty much nothing (you probably remember the anal beads thing, though, I’d wager). A fascinating peek into the shitty politics of world-class chess. Two Beers.
