Ted Danson shines in nursing home mystery

Blitz ★★★
Apple TV+

As he’s often done, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen dissects a familiar genre in his new film. Set in September 1940, as Nazi Germany bombs London nightly, this World War II period drama takes a revisionist approach to British defiance. The under-siege Brits are marked by racism and unscrupulous looters profit from the carnage, while socialist organisers rally working-class communities. Invoking king and country doesn’t cut it here.

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But unlike Hunger or 12 Years a Slave, McQueen’s lens is partly a child’s journey. George Hanway (Elliott Heffernan) is a nine-year-old biracial boy, sent to rural safety by his heartbroken single mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan). When he flees homewards, George encounters the best and worst of wartime London. The feature’s episodic feel is only enhanced by alternating the child’s journey with his mother’s quest to find him – the exceptional Ronan doesn’t have much to work with.

It’s not a great film, but nor is it predictable. McQueen’s touches, whether it’s a flashback of exuberant music and dancing or a moment of fixed stillness he shatters with chaos, are the distinct essence of his technique; Hans Zimmer’s electronic score bleeds into the air raid sirens and whirring bombs. History, in McQueen’s eyes, is brutal and complicated, even with the “good” victors writing it. Like Steve Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, this is a wary homage to youthful resilience.

Get Millie Black
Binge

Here’s a reminder of how crucial setting and life-long knowledge can be to a thriller. The plot of this missing-girl mystery, which naturally broadens to a wider conspiracy, may feel familiar, but when it unfolds in Jamaica and the show’s creator is Man Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James, there’s an evocative, underseen sense of place and the characters feel deeply rooted.

Tamara Lawrance is first-rate as the titular police detective returned to her childhood home from serving in London, but as an estranged sibling Chyna McQueen gives a startlingly vulnerable performance.

Interior Chinatown
Disney+

For the most part this metafiction about a Chinese restaurant waiter, Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang, Silicon Valley), who yearns to be the kick-ass lead character in his life story, manages to satisfy both its conceptual framework that exists inside a cliched story and provide a sense of humanity to what is an otherworldly realm. The Taika Waititi-directed first episode does a quick and effective job of establishing the rules under which this satire of slim Asian screen representation operates, and for once Ronny Chieng’s brash humour actually flourishes with the best friend supporting role.

Cruel Intentions
Amazon

If you want an example of how uninspiring and transactional a television reboot of a familiar property can be, look no further than this remake of the salacious 1999 teen melodrama of the same title, which was in turn a modern retelling of Dangerous Liaisons, the celebrated 1988 movie adaptation of the 1782 novel set in aristocratic France. That’s many iterations of a serpentine and sexually motivated tale, and this latest take, set at a Washington, DC university, has very little to add to project’s accumulated worth. The performances are shallow, the seductiveness stale.

Superstore
Stan

I used to hedge my bets with sitcoms and suggest that you had to be patient with the first season. Now, as shown by this American network comedy set in a Missouri big-box retail outlet, my advice is to skip the first season altogether. Starring America Ferrera and Ben Feldman as co-workers whose fencing and flirtations are headed in one direction, the second through sixth seasons of Justin Spitzer’s show remain an enjoyable mix of chaotic workplace comedy and personal commentary. Superstore concluded in 2021, but you can easily start (the second season) now.

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