488 Movies Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Page 30)

For a show about luxury brands (featuring A-list actors no less), The New Look is surprisingly tacky. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought I was watching a History Channel reenactment, instead of a supposedly prestige Apple TV+ show about the murky histories of Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) and Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn). The lines are clunky, the delivery is stiff, and doing all this in English with forced French and German accents is certainly…a choice. It’s not that they’re poor accents, but the inconsistency is distracting; it often sounds like I’m listening to a dub, which I’ve never been a fan of. To his credit, director Todd A. Kessler knows how to make a fashionable show. The gowns are gorgeous, and the designs Chanel and Dior come up with look just as chic as the day they first came out. But that’s just one thread of multi-layered show. It may look good, but it crumbles under the weight of its ambitious goal to be a biopic, a period piece, and a war drama all at once. What a waste of a good cast, an interesting story, and a gorgeous collection of gowns!

Genre: Drama, War & Politics

Actor: Ben Mendelsohn, Claes Bang, Emily Mortimer, John Malkovich, Juliette Binoche, Maisie Williams

Rating: TV-MA

As the prequel to what’s been called “Chinese Lord of the Rings”, The Longest Promise has the stunning sets, costumes, and magic to match, but not the worldbuilding or storytelling. The world of Yun Huang has familiar magical fantasy elements, as well as a royalty romance plotline where different tribes and communities vie for power in the continent. However, the way these elements are introduced makes it hard for new viewers to follow, particularly those unfamiliar with the Mirror book series it is based on. It’s still an entertaining watch, especially for fans of the fantastic xianxia genre.

Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Fang Yilun, Han Dong, Li Mingde, Lu Yuxiao, Ren Min, Wang Churan, Wang Ziqi, Xiao Zhan, Ye Shengjia

Director: Jiang Jia Jun

Tell Me Lies is a soapy college drama, but it’s a soapy college drama done right. It’s steamy and realistic (apart from the fact that no one seems to really be studying), capturing that moment in your life when you start freely exploring your identity and sexuality. As in most melodramas, it’s the mess and the titular lies that make the series exciting to watch, but it ultimately doesn’t hold enough substance to keep you engaged beyond that. It’s spicy candy—hot and exciting when consumed, but it’s neither nourishing nor filling. No harm in taking a bite though.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Alicia Crowder, Branden Cook, Catherine Missal, Grace Van Patten, Jackson White, Sonia Mena, Spencer House, Tom Ellis

Rating: TV-MA

When a romance drama is centered around the translation industry, it’s expected that Our Interpreter would involve communication issues. As Lin Xi meets her ex Xiao Yicheng, eight years after their breakup, there’s an interesting push and pull between technology and human labor, analytics versus artistic interpretation, as well as speed over quality, and this dynamic is likened to their conflicting desires in forging their lives. The drama also happens to highlight the linguistic beauty of the Chinese language, particularly at the times Lin’s translation work is tested against AI. That being said, the drama doesn’t really delve into these interesting themes, as the show prioritizes the romance more as the drama progresses.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Bi Yanjun, Chen Xingxu, Chen Yi Jing, Fei Qiming, Fu Jia, Lin Zilu, Ren Zhengbin, Victoria Song, Wang Sen, Wu Yanshu, Yu Shasha

Director: Zhang Tong

American Sports Story takes a pretty straightforward approach to telling Aaron Hernandez’s complicated life. The athlete grew up in a troubled household and struggled to mask his sexuality, and though he was granted a top football scholarship and eventually played in the big leagues, he still had that trauma—both psychological and physical—to bear. By the time the show reaches the fateful night in Hernandez’s life that made him a household name, we’d have seen just how messed up his circumstances were. Like most streaming series, this runs too long than necessary at 10 episodes, but it is a humanizing portrait of a mystifying man, as well as a showcase of great talent—Rivera turns in an especially nuanced performance. But apart from these, the show adds nothing new to the already long and heavy conversations that have been had about Hernandez’s life. There are multiple documentaries out there, as well as podcasts, articles, and video essays. You can watch this to see how well the actors dramatize real life, but don’t expect to glean anything new.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Ean Castellanos, Jaylen Barron, Josh Rivera, Lindsay Mendez, Tammy Blanchard

Rating: TV-MA

A Girl and an Astronaut is a series that wants to be science fiction, but can’t stop itself from diving into its romance. Starting from 2052, the series imagines a non-dystopian future, with successful versions of tech currently in the works. However, this is intercut with shots from 2022, where fighter pilots Niko and Bogdan have a Top Gun-esque rivalry, only with an added love triangle with Marta. Something here could have been done to make the sci-fi and the romance more relevant with each other, since the heart of the premise is a tragedy of lost love. However, the supposed stakes of the love triangle don’t feel real, as immediately, we know that Bogdan and Marta end up having a loveless marriage. The resulting show isn’t downright terrible, as the cinematography and visual effects are stunning. But the series feels like it should have been two separate stories, or at least made the romance feel compelling enough to watch.

Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Andrzej Chyra, Anna Cieślak, Grzegorz Damięcki, Jakub Sasak, Jędrzej Hycnar, Magdalena Boczarska, Magdalena Cielecka, Vanessa Aleksander

Director: Bartosz Prokopowicz

Rating: TV-MA

In the previous centuries, people were born into and died without ever being able to change their status. Nobles remained nobles and peasants remained peasants. But around the Renaissance, the idea of commerce and education allowed some leeway for men to reach a higher station, and for the Florios of Sicily, they’re able to reach higher spaces through the sheer force of will. This is an interesting idea, and The Lions of Sicily by Stefania Auci is able to capture it, but its show counterpart falters in depicting this. The sets and costumes are up to par, but the screenplay is unable to balance between the backstories, with the episode slipping confusedly in and between timelines.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Donatella Finocchiaro, Eduardo Scarpetta, Michele Riondino, Miriam Leone, Vinicio Marchioni

Director: Paolo Genovese

Rating: TV-MA

There are maybe 3 likable, level-headed cast members in a sea of instigators and neutrals in this trashy reality show. Combustible elements everywhere, fighting in front of the guests on episode 1, egos and exes trying to work together, and of course the most insecure and inept ones get the most TV time. They tell you that working for Lisa is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and while she provides order to the chaos with her caring principal energy, they don’t really bother to fill you in on who she is. Within the confines of the show, she's an accomplished professional trying to run a business, so she hired staff through a reality show full of copy-paste people who are nothing without conflict.

Genre: Reality

Actor: Andre Mitchell, Anthony Bar, Caroline Byl, Emily Kovacs, Eric Funderwhite, Lisa Vanderpump, Marciano Brunette, Stephen Alsvig

Rating: TV-14

Based on the bestselling book of the same name, Three Women is a ten-part series that tells the story of everyday small-town women facing their own problems with intimacy and sensuality. There’s Lina (Betty Gilpin) from Indiana, a sexually frustrated housewife whose conservative husband and friends shame her for her desires. There’s Sloane (DeWanda Wise) from Massachusettes, a successful restauranteur judged for her appetite for threesomes. Then there’s young Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy) from North Dakota, who had an affair with her English teacher in high school. Gia—and in effect, the show itself—tries her best to tie a thread between these three stories, but they’re ultimately too uneven to resemble a decent whole. What could’ve been a neat anthology or a seamless multi-part story is a fractured tale with parts that shine way more than the others. In particular, it’s Lina’s story that stands out from the others. Gilpin is convincing and vulnerable as her character, and you feel an immediate protectiveness over her. The showrunners would’ve done well to either use her story as a standalone or flesh out the others with the same direction and depth to make Three Women work. As it stands, it feels too overstuffed and uneven to sit through.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Betty Gilpin, Blair Underwood, DeWanda Wise, Gabrielle Creevy, Shailene Woodley

Rating: TV-MA

It would be unfair to demand the same things out of The Continental that the John Wick film series already does so well. And this three-episode prequel definitely works as its own animal; even if you haven't seen those increasingly elaborate Keanu Reeves movies, this miniseries easily finds a whole group of sympathetic characters worth rooting for and builds to a series of exciting set pieces full of personality and excellent choreography. The groundedness of The Continental's ensemble of heroes emerging from the seedy streets of this fictionalized 1970s New York works surprisingly well against the arrogance of the show's villains. And the world they all inhabit is rendered just as slickly as in the films.

But in its search for an identity of its own, The Continental becomes a reminder for why the John Wick movies work so well—and why this series just can't capture the same spark. Those are simple, primal movies that contrast Reeves' stoic, mythic protagonist against a bizarre world of colorful enemies. The Continental, in contrast, borrows from many hardboiled crime dramas but never actually provides any insight into the systems or rules that govern all the factions involved. Individual characters may achieve their goals by the end, but it's ultimately hard to see how they add to the grander ideas of revenge and redemption at play.

Genre: Action, Action & Adventure, Crime, Thriller

Actor: Ben Robson, Colin Woodell, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Jeremy Bobb, Katie McGrath, Mel Gibson, Mishel Prada, Peter Greene

Rating: TV-MA