Source : the age
This week’s picks include a new spin on the Green Lantern franchise, Brooke Shield’s light-hearted detective drama, a new season for the longest-running sitcom in US history and a provocative director’s surreal masterpiece.
Lanterns ★★★ (HBO Max)
Superheroes and mortals alike return to the same question in HBO Max’s gritty, psychological take on DC’s Green Lantern franchise: “Are you afraid?” The three words become a mantra for John Stewart (Aaron Pierre, Rebel Ridge; The Morning Show), a Lantern-in-training assigned to follow around Earth’s long-standing Lantern, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights). Together, they investigate a strange shooting in Nevada with suspected intergalactic links.
Without mental resolve, these intergalactic law officers can’t use their weapons – a magical emerald green ring that lets them fly and create objects, force fields and more out of sheer mind power. But fear itself is the powering force of Lanterns, a show that examines how it is used to justify acts of love, war and hatred across interpersonal relationships and intergalactic colonialism alike.
Created by Chris Mundy (Ozark) and produced by Damon Lindelof (Watchmen; The Leftovers) and DC writer Tom King, Lanterns is a detective drama first and a superhero show second, though there’s a solid amount of cheesy jokes and quips. Don’t worry: that dark, moody edge isn’t an excuse for terrible lighting or filters. Lanterns offers crisp visuals.
At first, John and Hal couldn’t seem more opposite. While Hal’s decades of power and fame has left him arrogant and smarmy, John is comparatively robotic, a stoic ex-military man emotionally cauterised by a traumatic childhood. In Lanterns’ opening scene, he barely reacts when his father draws a close-range rifle in their backyard for a William Tell trick, shooting an apple atop his head.
Both men are fearless, but through flashbacks across the seven of eight episodes offered for review, it’s revealed that their mental fortitude is not equal. As in the comics, John is a black man, one told as a boy that Hal and other white men are “privileged enough to not know fear”.
That tension – of resentment at Hal’s ability to be a fool in public, such as getting arrested on purpose for the purposes of their investigation – is one of Lanterns’ most intriguing, understated qualities.
With a weekly release schedule, it’s easy to imagine casual audiences might drop off, as early episodes find John cold and Hal a touch too irritating. At least the other characters – including Kelly Macdonald as a sheriff, and Nathan Fillion reprising his role from Superman as an abrasive Lantern – agree on that last point, too. As someone not particularly drawn to a trauma-led take on a lesser-known superhero, I found Lanterns gripping enough. It’s a balanced blend of cheesy one-liners, engaging action and emotional depth, with lots to love for fans of DC or superhero stories more broadly.
You’re Killing Me ★★ (Stan)
Putting aside the incessant, overdone jokes about Gen Z and that one of the characters is a true-crime podcaster, there’s a quaint 2000s feel to You’re Killing Me, a light-hearted detective drama with no pretense of prestige.
Brooke Shields stars as crime novelist Allison, whose agent tells her to ditch the “menopausal murder mysteries” to find a new audience. Amalia Williamson (Sullivan’s Crossing) is Andrea, the headstrong, tech-adept 20-something podcaster who Alison reluctantly teams up with to write a bestseller. Naturally, that involves solving the murder mystery of the week, all while Allison makes fun of Andrea’s elaborate coffee order and Andrea lectures her about the “patriarchal elements” of Cinderella.
These beyond-tired jokes (never mind that they almost exclusively deal with Millennial, not Gen Z, tropes) ease up across the series’ six episodes. So does Shields, whose frantic, overwrought performance shoots for high-strung but gives Allison an aggressive, hostile edge, before mellowing out.
It’s not a particularly pretty or well-made show, with the lighting and make-up departments breaking out into all-out war. But it’s fun enough, with intriguing investigations and overarching plots, including Allison’s flirtations with a cop (Tom Cavanagh) and a mystery around Andrea’s long-missing mother.
Much like Allison’s crime novels, it’s not aiming to be anything other than an easy, unchallenging watch. In that, it’s successful.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ★★★ (Disney+)
Eighteen seasons in, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is by far the longest-running sitcom in US history. Remarkable by any metric, it’s borderline incomprehensible given how the comedy trades in offence, following a group of deplorable friends who run a dive bar. The uninitiated should know it’s as if Curb Your Enthusiasm added in gross-out comedy and truly amoral characters played to perfection by Danny DeVito, Kaitlin Olsson, Charlie Day, Rob Mac and creator Glenn Howerton. Definitely not for everyone, the cult comedy keeps finding fresh ways to be filthy: Take upcoming episode title Frank Marries A Corpse as proof.
Stalked ★★★ (HBO Max)
In a chilling three-part documentary, three New Zealand women share their stories of being stalked by strangers, acquaintances and ex-partners. Rather than dedicate one episode to each woman, Stalked jumps between the stories of Jazz, Zeni and Tessa across its two-hour runtime to link their experiences, which include shrugging off early warning signs and the systemic failures of law and police to protect them.
What elevates Stalked from more exploitative true-crime docs is the tenderness with which it’s made, with room for the women’s sense of humour to shine through alongside their traumas.
Nowhere ★★★★★ (Brollie)
Ahead of Gregg Araki releasing his first film in more than a decade this week (I Want Your Sex, starring Cooper Hoffman, Olivia Wilde and Charli xcx), why not watch the provocative director’s surreal masterpiece? Described by Araki as “90210 on acid”, Nowhere is a hyper-saturated sci-fi melodrama following a gigantic ensemble of beautiful 20-somethings (Shannon Doherty, Rose McGowan and Ryan Phillippe among them) adrift in an apocalyptic-tinged Los Angeles. Powered by an immense ’90s soundtrack (30-plus songs in its 82-minute runtime), Nowhere’s parody-indulgence of the era’s alt-nihilism is absurd, deeply evocative and undeniably cool.
