More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Looking for the latest films and shows to stream on telly?
We've rounded up nine for you to try...
SERIES
13 Reasons Why
Netflix, from Friday, June 5
It’s three years since we met Clay Jensen, the sensitive teenager who spent the compelling drama’s first and second seasons investigating the suicide of classmate Hannah Baker and trying to help her parents and friends gain some kind of closure. The third run focused on Clay’s efforts to expose corruption at his high school, as well as the murder of fellow student Bryce Walker, a notorious serial rapist. Now we’re returning to Liberty High for the fourth and final series, just as the pupils are about to graduate ahead of going their separate ways. Plotlines are being kept pretty secret for now, but we’re expecting all loose ends to be tied up. Dylan Minnette stars, and will be joined by Gary Sinise, who joins the cast as Clay’s therapist.
FILM
Parasite
Curzon Home Cinema, Amazon Prime and other download services
Don’t miss the chance to see this wickedly entertaining, genre-bending satire, which deserved to become the first film not in the English language to claim the Best Picture statuette at the Oscars. Wily patriarch Kim Ki-tek presides over a family of con artists. They live in a squalid basement apartment in a poor neighbourhood of Seoul with a prime view of drunken passers-by urinating in the street.
Good fortune smiles unexpectedly on Ki-tek’s son, the mild-mannered Ki-woo, when he is recommended as an English tutor for teenager Park Da-hae. Ki-woo falsifies his qualifications to impress Da-hae’s wealthy parents and once he has earned the couple’s misplaced trust, Ki-woo recommends other members of his clan for positions of responsibility. However, suspicious housekeeper Mun-kwang threatens to expose the deception.
Barbs are positioned with surgical precision to draw spurts of blood as the besieged players stagger forlornly towards the brink of self-destruction.
Rating: *****
DOCUMENTARY
Dear...
Apple TV+, from Friday, June 5
Never one to hide its light under a bushel, Apple has a series of adverts (which can be seen on YouTube) entitled Dear Apple, in which members of the public appear in short films describing how the company’s products have improved their lives. Now the tech giant is expanding the idea in a 10-episode documentary series profiling some of society’s most influential figures. Made by Emmy winning director RJ Cutler, the show will feature the likes of
Oprah Winfrey, Gloria Steinem, Spike Lee, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Yara Shahidi, Stevie Wonder, Aly Raisman and Misty Copeland. But the one we’re most looking forward to focuses on Sesame Street resident Big Bird. Here’s hoping his best pal Mr Snuffleupagus also makes an appearance.
SERIES
Alex Rider
Amazon Prime, from Thursday, June 4
In 2006, Alex Pettyfer starred in Stormbreaker, an action movie based on the first book in Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider novel series about a teenage spy working for MI6. It was supposed to be the start of a blockbusting franchise, which was shelved when the film flopped at the box office. But Rider is back in action, this time in a thrilling eight-part small-screen series. Pettyfer, now too old for the central role, has been replaced by Otto Farrant. If you’ve seen the movie, don’t worry, there won’t be a nagging sense of deja vu about the show - it’s an adaptation of the second book, Point Blanc, and sees Rider investigating the murder of his secret agent uncle and its links to the assassination of two high-profile billionaires. Stephen Dillane, Vicky McClure and Andrew Buchan are among the supporting cast.
MINI SERIES
Waco
UKTV Play
Originally broadcast on Alibi last summer, this acclaimed mini-series is back on the box via UKTV’s underrated on demand service. Taylor Kitsch, Melissa Benoist, Michael Shannon, Rory Culkin and John Leguizamo star in a
dramatised retelling of the 51-day siege that took place within a religious community just outside Waco in Texas in early 1993. The programme’s makers have attempted to tell the story from different angles, an approach that caused controversy in some quarters, but allows viewers to make up their own minds about why the FBI and other US government groups targeted the sect, and why the stand-off ended in tragedy after a fire broke out. Eventually 76 people were found dead at the site, including the community’s leader, David Koresh.
FILM
Don’t Look Down
Amazon Prime Video and other download services
Writer-directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau tantalise and tease with an enigmatic fivehander set in a chic apartment overlooking night-time Paris. Don’t Look Down poses more questions than it answers as five people who barely know each other meet to share a last supper for the domineering man they have in common. This mysterious yet toxic figure languishes in a bedroom, unseen, and one by one, the five guests enter the boudoir for a private moment of reckoning with their tormentor. Over the course of the night, virtual strangers find comfort and courage in numbers, confronting some of the demons which torment them.
Rating: ***
SERIES
El Presidente
Amazon Prime, from Friday, June 5
In 2015, Fifa, football’s international governing body, underwent a huge shake-up following a corruption scandal. The inside story is told in this eight-part comedy drama, which pays particular attention to the part played by Sergio Jadue, a small-time Chilean football club president who rose from obscurity to become a key player in a $150m bribery conspiracy. Written and directed by Academy Awardwinning director and screenwriter Armando Bo, who co-wrote the movie Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the project pulls no punches in its depiction of Jadue’s sudden rise and spectacular fall, which ended with him being banned for life from the beautiful game by Fifa’s Ethics Committee.
FILM
Dolittle
Amazon Prime Video and other download services
A special effects-clogged odyssey inspired by Hugh Lofting’s 1922 book. Following the death of his adventurer wife, gifted veterinarian Dr John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr) closes the doors to his animal hospital. He becomes a recluse, surrounded by a menagerie of chums. However, the unexpected intrusion of a boy called Tommy Stubbins coincides with an urgent summons to Buckingham Palace.
Queen Victoria has been poisoned with a pernicious variety of nightshade and the only remedy is the fruit of the mythical Eden tree. Dolittle and fledgling apprentice Tommy embark on a madcap mission to save the ailing monarch with jealous rival Dr Blair Mudfly in hot pursuit. Throughout, Downey Jr walks the same plank of intentional weirdness as Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow by adopting a strangulated Welsh accent, which varies in thickness from one
scene to the next.
Rating: **
DOCUMENTARY
Somebody Feed Phil
Season 3
Five episodes on Netflix
There is more food, glorious food as Phil Rosenthal, creator of hit comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, tucks into a third series of his culinary travel show for Netflix. Once again, he seeks out the best restaurants and cultural morsels in locations around the world. On the menu in these five mouth-watering episodes are tasty treats in Chicago, London, Marrakesh, Montreal and Seoul.
