Louis Theroux sets his eyebrows for his first film with Netflix, as the serious actor stumbles into the drama. Imperfect Women and Alan Ritchson gets his fist in War Machine.
Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere ★★★★ (Netflix)
Louis Theroux does the perfect job in this documentary about the extreme fringes of online male culture. That is to say, the movie veteran he uses his questioning eyebrows and uses his apologetic embarrassment as a tool to find, all the while finding the ugly truth and hunger for deception behind the movement that tries to turn boys’ and teenagers’ cell phones into an instrument of indoctrination and ATM.
It’s a useful descriptor – this is what “red-pilled” means – and a possible public disinfectant.
A long-time BBC fixture, Theroux is using Netflix to gain access to friends and followers of Andrew Tate’s camp, the first name to be referenced in a vicious online hate speech. One of them, the Englishman Harrison Sullivan, aka HSTikkyTokky, has not heard of Theroux and does not know what to make of this style, surprised the 55-year-old with zero game.
“The shape doesn’t say much,” Sullivan says, sizing up Theroux’s biceps. That’s the last thing he should be worrying about.
As he always does, Theroux is not humble but asks. He lets his people talk, believing that the exposure they will receive will be more revealing than rewarding. That’s certainly the case here, where internet provocateurs like feminist Myron Gaines find that Theroux’s talk can shed its hypocrisy.
Without a forensic investigation, Theroux establishes the financial benefits that contribute to the constant confusion of passing the “cheat code”. And he shows their fans, whether they are young boys or serious adults, in recounting street scenes.
American lobbyist Justin WallerBarron Trump’s Mar-a-Lago guest, tells Theroux how he’s used to having a “one-sided marriage” with his wife, Kristen. Later, on a visit to the home, Theroux runs the idea of Kristen, whose sales pitch isn’t as good as her husband’s.
It tells how Theroux ends up interviewing women, whether wives or mothers, who see the truth behind sales slogans. Gaines, his girlfriend Angie notes, is “a different person” when the cameras are off.
By the time Theroux reaches the right-wing commentator Sneako in New York – who is earnestly highlighting celebrity magazine articles as a symbol of a Satanic group that “runs the world” – Theroux has found the end of a plot of violence and violent abuse. He doesn’t need to reveal that much because his people tend to destroy themselves. Sullivan is making the rounds online after Theroux’s visit, spouting anti-Semitism and being violent in his frequent streams.
The online culture and large corporate platforms that live, Theroux notes, “incite extreme behavior”, but Inside the Manosphere shows how this belief system is neither complicated nor credible. That design, it turns out, says a lot.
Imperfect Women ★★½ (Apple TV)
A heavyweight cast can only get you so far, as demonstrated by this psychological thriller starring Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara. The trio play best friends whose union is shattered when Nancy of Mara, the distraught wife of a former fortune, is murdered and Eleanor of Washington and Mary of Moss discover they only knew different parts of her life. As the scandals grow and the police circle, the limits of their responsibility are tested.
This California folk show has a terrific, high-pitched melodrama going on in it, whether it’s in the mature narrative or the passionate look between Eleanor and Nancy’s troubled husband, Robert (Joel Kinnaman). There is a structural issue with the story starting from Eleanor’s point of view, moving through Nancy’s memories, and then moving to Eleanor’s – the narrative feels unbalanced, when the different perspectives never inform each other. The narrative skill is an admirable trick, but it doesn’t improve the quest of the remaining two.
Although there are many references to the modern restrictions that women have to endure, more than anything Imperfect Women it plays like a 1950s potboiler. That has its appeal: Kinnaman’s classic leading man’s jaw can look brutally self-serving when shot from right angles. There is also always a pick-me-up HamiltonLeslie Odom Jr appears as Eleanor’s straight-talking brother, Donovan. “Yeah, you’ve been busy,” she tells him, anger in her voice. The same goes for the show.
It’s gone ★★★½ (Stan)
Sit down to a slow fire with this British thriller, which treats a police investigation into a missing woman as a battle of will between the detective, Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles), and her suspicious husband, Michael Polly (David Morrissey). Institutions, authorities and public perception inform the text from The kidnapper creator George Kay – is Michael a domineering husband with an absolute need for control, or a stoic man with an old-fashioned hatred of public sentiment? With a mind as dry as punctuation, the answer keeps changing.
Spirit Elephant ★★★ (Disney+)
Investigators, whether brilliant, deluded or both, are the rising star of German filmmaker Werner Herzog. Documents such as White Diamond and Grizzly Man are some of the best in his long, unorganized list, and in this National Geographic feature Herzog captures another contender. South African naturalist Dr Steven Boyes believes that there are large undocumented elephants living in the highlands of Angola. Cue Herzog’s narrator’s voice, as the search progresses – it must be said – less personal risk and more thought processes than Herzog’s usual protagonist.
War Machine ★★½ (Netflix)
This is good Hollywood logic: in the exciting video of Amazon Prime Video Accessorstar struck Alan Ritchson He has fought his way through every level of the human enemy. The next step? Strangers. Written and directed by Australian filmmaker Patrick Hughes (Hitman’s Guardian), the feature features Ritchson as a silent candidate for the United States Army’s elite Rangers whose training is interrupted by the arrival of a star. It’s a sci-fi survival film – Ranger candidates carry blanks – with tracking elements Transformer, A warshipand Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. It’s somewhat out of place, but moderately enjoyable.
Chris Fleming: Live at the Palace ★★★★ (HBO Max)
The accolades for American comedian Chris Fleming have been building over the past few months – “amazing to see him, a true artist,” he declared. Marc Maron – and it culminates with the precision and specificity of this stand-up, which captures Fleming at its extraordinary quality. Dressed in a purple jumpsuit with a jaunty figure that adjusts her deft touch with language, her set feels like a welcome addition to current stand-up trends. Fleming is selfish, inquisitive, and rarely abides by the rules of humor. His Adam Driver NPR interview is unique in the making.
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