Watch at home: Strange things to tell the bees during the Peterloo massacre

Nathaniel R giving you the heads up on what's newly available to screen at home.

DVD/Blu-Ray/Rental
• High Life - In which Dr Juliette Binoche gets nasty with her patients and Robert Pattinson mopes around in outer space while caring for an infant.
• Tell It to the Bees - In which Dr Anna Paquin seduces her new friend Holliday Grainger (fine performance!) in a small homophobic British town in the 1950s. But it's actually a sentimental family movie of sorts. Watch out for the unintentionally hilarious killer bees! 

Also newish on blu-ray and/or DVD: Pet Sematary, The Best of Enemies, Little, After, Mojin: The Worm Valley, and Gotham (the complete series). 

iTunes 99¢ Deals
Titles you can rent on the cheap this week include the orgiastic French film Climax, 2016's Best Picture winner Moonlight, 2017's very best film Lady Bird, the new horror classic The VVitch, Bong Joon-ho's popular South Korean monster movie The Host, and the charming Eighth Grade.  They're also offering up Don Jon & Under the Skin in a stealth attempt to remind you of what a genre-hopping ridiculously talented and versatile actress Scarlett Johansson is. Be happy that she shakes off the Marvel shackles very soon (Black Widow is currently filming). Who knows what pleasures await when she can step out of that one genre and into all genres again!

Streaming this week

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Big Little Lies MVPs: Episode 2.4 – “She Knows”

Previously: Episode 1 (Nathaniel) Episode 2 (Spencer) Episode 3 (Lynn)

Let's face it. This fucking lie has had quite a shelf life.

by Nathaniel R

I can't be the only person to have made this observation but occasionally Big Little Lies is rather like a high-end version of Desperate Housewives. There are the core group of women who maybe wouldn't be friends in real life but whose distinctive personalities make a juicy combustible mix as a cast (within the alloted tight geographically region: cul de sac in one case, beachfront in the other) Didn't Housewives also have a crime or murder mystery each season to mix in with the soap opera theatrics? At any rate, it's worth mentioning because the writing on Big Little Lies this season is... questionable. It's not a patch on the first season cumulatively, alas, but scene by scene it's still great evening entertainment in the old tradition of the "watercooler" show; it certainly gives us a lot to talk about!

In this episode, Mary Louise (Meryl Streep) makes her big move -- suing Celeste (Nicole Kidman) for custody of "her boys". That's the huge story beat that will undoubtedly take us through to the finale (episode 7) but it's more like a prologue this time around as the bulk of the episode deals with 1) Amabella's birthday party 2) Madeleine and Ed's flailing marriage, and 3) the bizarre 'are they really going there?' subplot of Bonnie's mom having a stroke while also possibly being psychic and predicting that Bonnie will drown. We suspect everyone in the writer's room of Big Little Lies wore matching Regina George"A Little Bit Dramatic" t-shirts while they wrote "She Knows"

Top Ten MVPs of Big Little Lies, Episode 2.4: “She Knows”

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Streaming Roulette, July: Reese doesn't live under the silver lake anymore

As is our practice we've selected 8-10 titles and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!). It's our way of previewing new titles streaming in the first half of JULY 2019. (★ means we recommend catching them.) Please do let us know if you're dying to discuss any of the films and maybe we'll write about them.  

Ready? Let's go...

Why did I get stuck with the janky old broke hobo Spider-Man? 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) on Netflix ★
Watched this again on a whim with a friend who was curious because it won the Oscar. He's not into animated movies or superhero movies and he totally enjoyed it. Thus are its many inventive delights. It really holds up to viewing number two. Jam-packed with details you can easily miss on the first round.

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Big Little Lies MVPs: Episode 2.3 – “The End of the World”

Previously: Episode 1 (Nathaniel) Episode 2 (Spencer)

by Lynn Lee

As someone who loved the first season of Big Little Lies, I have to admit I haven’t been enjoying the show’s sophomore outing as much, in large part because the tone has been so much more subdued, almost dirge-like.  It feels like the fire’s gone out of many of the key characters: Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz), of course, but even more so, Reese Witherspoon’s Madeline.  (Not Renata, bless her – yet even her manic aggressiveness seems driven by a desperation that wasn’t there before.)  This isn’t a choice I quarrel with, exactly: it feels like a necessary reckoning as the inexorable aftermath of a violent death, and the cast is beautifully illustrating the strain the “Monterey Five”’s silence is exercising on each of their lives and relationships. 

That said, the moments of humor – mostly courtesy of Laura Dern as Renata, of course – came as an especially welcome break, and figure heavily in this week’s MVPs...

Top Ten MVPs of Big Little Lies, Episode 2.3: “The End of the World”

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Emmy FYC: Suranne Jones in "Gentleman Jack"

Team Experience has been sharing our FYCs for the Emmys. With voting ending today here's our last plea from Deborah Lipp...

Suranne Jones, you have stolen my heart. To be fair, it’s Anne Lister who has stolen my heart, but Jones breathes such extraordinary life into the character, that I cannot separate them. Yes, I love the historical figure of Anne Lister, whoever she might have been in real life, but I love this Anne Lister, and that is all due to Suranne Jones.

Anyone familiar with my writing knows I do not attempt to remove my personal slant from my reviews. I don’t believe in it, to be honest. We all bring ourselves to the viewing experience, and we color what we see with what we bring to seeing. I write this rave review as myself, a queer woman married to the fantastically butch Professor Spouse...

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