Best First Watches: August 2022
A League of Their Own
courtesy of prime video
Last month, I kept alluding to “the Amazon Prime show about baseball.” Anyone paying the smallest bit of attention could figure out that I was referring to A League of Their Own. I spend a thousand or so words talking about how great it is over here, but since that was a professional™️ review, I couldn’t talk about how I’m in love with every single woman on that show. I have never looked at anyone as respectfully as I looked at D’Arcy Carden and Chanté Adams. Just the utmost respect.
Icon
pretty sweet films
In this home, we love and support the careers of ex-Teenage Bounty Hunters actors. Which is how I ended up covering Icon. It’s a simple story about a young teenage couple who must decide what to do with an unexpected pregnancy. It’s a story that you’ve seen quite a few times before, but Devon Hales and Parker Padgett as the young couple are revelatory. I hope to be watching them perform for a long time to come.
Prey
hulu
I say this with the utmost love, but there were a million ways Prey could go wrong. Sequels, prequels, whatever-quels have a way of ruining things. Granted, I haven’t seen the original Predator movies, so I don’t care about what could potentially be ruined. Prey takes things back to the 1700s and is an old-school story of survival where the real demon was white men.
Glorious
shudder
One man + one Lovecraftian God voiced by J.K. Simmons + the nastiest gas station bathroom you’ve ever seen = a really compelling genre flick. Yet another survival story where humans are the real demons.
Emily the Criminal
Aubrey Plaza is a force to be reckoned with. Not only can she play the charming romantic dreamboat and steal the show in movies like Spin Me Round and Happiest Season, but she can also command a drama film. Emily the Criminal is a gnarly, gritty look at the oppressive weight of student loan debt in the United States.
Orphan: First Kill
paramount+
We already briefly touched on prequels/sequels with Prey, and Orphan: First Kill is another. I’ll be honest, my expectations were low. I was pretty much anticipating this movie to be a rehash of the original, but I was excited nonetheless. How nice to find out that I was dead wrong! Orphan: First Kill decided to quadruple down on campiness, and it manages to be unapologetically absurd while including a twist that took me completely by surprise. I would watch a million more of these. Even when Fuhrman is 97 years old. I’d still watch her pretend to be a child, seduce a husband, and burn a house down.
The Daphne Project
Based on this short description, you’ll know whether The Daphne Project is for you: A mockumentary about community theatre. If that even remotely entices you, I implore you to seek out this film. It is one of the funniest movies I’ve watched in recent years, and Zora Iman Crews (who also co-wrote, co-directed, and produced) is nothing short of comedic genius. It’s a quick little movie (clocking in at barely over an hour), but it’s far funnier than films two or three times its length.
The Novice
The Novice is like Whiplash, but gay and about rowing. So…five stars. I kid, but it’s been a long time since a movie made me feel so viscerally uncomfortable. That’s mostly thanks to the performance of Isabelle Fuhrman (the titular orphan from Orphan: First Kill). I wouldn’t say The Novice is a fun time, but it’s a technically fascinating watch. So much of the film hinges on the internal unrest of Fuhrman’s character, and it’s impressive (and uncomfortable) to watch that unrest physically manifest itself.
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