[ streaming film + tv ] PREMIERES WEDNESDAY: Workin’ Moms: Season 4 Audiences in its native Canada have already seen the latest season of this hit comedy about juggling kids and careers. Meanwhile, Japanese audiences are probably watching a game show about juggling kids and hunting knives. (Netflix)
PREMIERES FRIDAY: Dead to Me: Season 2 Will Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini be able to escape justice for murdering James Marsden? Sure, as long as they’re smart enough to blame it on either X-Men 3 or Superman Returns. (Netflix) The Eddy Whiplash and La La Land director Damien Chazelle brings us a series in which an American jazzman moves to Paris to run a nightclub. In Season 1, he’s horrified to learn his partner is involved with the mob. If there’s a Season 2, it may revolve around his shattering discovery that water runs downhill. (Netflix)
Beanie Feldstein in How to Build a Girl PHOTO COURTESY IFC FILMS
WHAT A GIRL WANTS Beanie Feldstein finds her voice in ‘How to Build a Girl’
Rust Valley Restorers: Season 2 Auto wizards find a whole new fleet of junkers to spruce up for a profit. You know, kind of like the Peloton dude did with his wife. (Netflix)
BY MARYANN JOHN ASON
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he title is illuminating, and ironic: How to Build a young woman who dares to be herself in the face of regular Girl. We girls don’t have cultural scripts for build- opposition telling her to shut up and pipe down. Here, Feldstein’s Johanna Morrigan is British, 16 years ing ourselves in the way that boys do, which come at boys from all angles: from pop culture, from sports, from old in the early 1990s, and less assured of a successful path in life until she, smart but underprivihistory lessons in school, from everyleged, finds her voice as a critic for a thing that they see in the world that rock-music magazine. tells them they can do whatever they HOW TO BUILD A GIRL Or does she? Find her voice, that want and all barriers they encounIFC Films on demand Friday, May 8 is. Johanna’s journey is shaped by ter can be surmounted. (Disclaimer: the cruelty of boys and men who run applies mostly only to straight white the field she has chosen to jump into, boys, and isn’t even really true, but a cruelty that overtly states that it still it gives them a confidence boost, and the arrogance to expect everything from the world, and wants fresh new perspectives while sneakily molding them into more of the same-old same-old. Johanna is absolutely that’s hugely important.) Certainly movies historically have not had a lot of inter- desperate to be “cool,” and to be seen as cool, and yet the est in letting teen girls be anything other than supporting narrowness of the definition of “cool” trips her up and characters in boys’ constructions, in a filmdom dominated fools her into thinking that conformity is where it’s at. (She by male filmmakers. But we’ve had a few really, really doesn’t seem to realize that her dad, for instance – played good movies about teen girls recently, like last year’s Little by the always amazing Paddy Considine – a still-tryingto-make-it musician, is authentically cool.) She lurches Women and Booksmart. And now we have How to Build a Girl, which would have through fits and starts of “coolness,” sometimes accidentally been a small theatrical release if cinemas hadn’t been shut- hitting on truly hip originality, but more often succumbing tered. This is not an arthouse film, however, except in that to the pressure of others. it is about that weird creature, a teenaged girl. Maybe now, Johanna stumbles through an awful lot – emphasis on the with no other new movies to see, it can garner a significant awful – as she discovers that the meanness that sells music audience on VOD among those desperate for new movies. magazines is antithetical to her irrepressible positive spirit. I hope so. Because this is a lovely, goofy movie. It is easy- The hypocrisy of the world’s expectations comes in for a going, chaotic and a bit all over the place, just like journalist, gently sardonic knock: Look how the world tries to crush essayist and professional messy girl Caitlin Moran, upon girls! Look how tough it is to push back! Look how unforwhose semiautobiographical novel this is based. (Moran giving the world is when you give in to what it wants! The also wrote the screenplay.) And it stars Booksmart’s Beanie impossibility of women winning at life unless they embrace Feldstein, who is a goddamn American national treasure, a their own integrity is, maybe, the prime lesson any girl looksort of everygirl (or at least every-white-girl) who cheerfully ing to build her life can take from this terrific movie. embodies the audacious self-possession and conviction of a feedback@orlandoweekly.com
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Restaurants on the Edge: Season 2 Grab yourself a table for fresh new installments of the reality series in which business experts rescue eateries that are in danger of going under. Expect many further seasons, since the list of potential profiles now includes EVERY RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD. (Netflix)
Solar Opposites Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland is one of the principals of this animated comedy about a family of extraterrestrials who can’t decide if they like living in the U.S.A. Hey, imagine how the Haitians feel! (Hulu)
PREMIERES SUNDAY: I Know This Much Is True Wally Lamb’s novel yields a sixepisode miniseries, with Mark Ruffalo doing double duty as a Connecticut divorcee and his twin brother, a paranoid schizophrenic. Kind of a walk in the park when your last troubled twin was the Hulk, innit? (HBO)
PREMIERES MONDAY: Bordertown: Season 3 Ending a two-year wait, Finland sends us 10 more episodes of their crime drama about a master detective working in a small town. A binge-watch is worth it just for the on-screen prompt, “Are you still watching Bordertown, or are you Finnish?” (Netflix) Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics A whimsical documentary that recounts celebrities’ experiences with mindaltering drugs. Participants include the late Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain. But wait – are dead people really the best advertisement for the product? (Netflix) Trial by Media George Clooney teamed up with legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin to produce this docuseries, which examines the influence news coverage had on the trials of famous defendants like Jenny Jones and Rod Blagojevich. Look for more of Blagojevich next fall on ABC’s America’s Funniest Pardons. (Netflix)
PREMIERES TUESDAY: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy Vs. the Reverend Kimmy takes on the man who once held her captive in this eagerly awaited special, an interactive affair that lets the audience determine the course of its plot. Boy, it’s a good thing Ariel Castro isn’t still around to weigh in, or there’s no telling where this might go! (Netflix)
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MAY 6-12, 2020 ● ORLANDO WEEKLY
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