17 Best Releases Similar to Money Heist on Netflix

About 25 years ago, comics fell in love with a storytelling device called decompression. At its best, it expanded what typically would be short stories to several issues long to better explore emotional beats and psychological motives and give the occasional joke room to breathe. For instance, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko told the origin of Spider-Man in 11 pages. Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley retold an updated version of the origin in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN in more than 130 pages spread over six installments. Over time, however, the technique became a source of frustration for many. Too often, readers would find themselves wielding through a multi-issue arc only to discover it was more a prelude of things to come than its own story. These exercises in attention maintenance weren’t without their charms, but even the highest of charms grow tired with repetition. Netflix’s Kaos, from Charlie Covell, creator of the excellent teen road trip series The End of the F***ing World, sadly feels a lot like those infuriatingly decompressed comics of the early 2000s. Which is to say, there’s plenty to enjoy in the eight episodes, but by the time credits roll on the season, there’s a distinct lack of satisfaction. Stephen Dillane has a good stretch and a yawn. (Netflix) To tackle the positives first, Covell and co-writer Georgia Christou’s chop-and-screw approach to adapting Greek mythology makes good use of the material without being chained to the centuries-old tales. For example, recasting Persephone (Rakie Ayola) as Hades’ (David Thewlis) willing partner gives the audience a unique take on the duo, reveals how myth works even in a world where the gods are demonstrably real, and adds a layer of wickedness to Hera who seems to oversee holy PR, for lack of a better way to put it. Continue Reading →

After six about 20-minute episodes of the Shane Gillis-Steve Gerben-created sitcom Tires, one can begin to understand why Netflix would want to work with him. He has a certain charisma and some acting chops. In one scene during the first episode, Gillis’ character, also named Shane, tries to snow a very unhappy reporter. In the sequence, Gillis has to convey to the audience that he doesn’t mean a word he’s saying and is using the moment to humiliate his boss and cousin Will (Gerben) while playing authentic convincingly enough that one can see why the reporter might fall for it. It’s not an easy lift, but Gillis makes it work. The story is fine enough for a hangout comedy. Will is a failure whose father owns several tire stores. Either as punishment or because it’s where he can do the least harm, Dad has exiled Will to manage one of the two lowest-performing branches of the chain. Physically slight and coded as a kind of nerd, Will doesn’t fit in with the mechanics, including their seeming ringleader, Shane. To save the shop and his job and earn his dad’s affection, he spends every episode of a “marketing” idea that derails spectacularly.  Catch a glimpse of Steve Gerben. (Netflix) The bad news is that, despite a sound enough premise, everything the show says or tries has the shape of jokes without actually including a laugh line. It’s the essence of humor without any of the pesky chuckles. Continue Reading →

As the TV series Everything Now begins, Mia (Sophie Wilde) is eager for freedom. After spending months in a hospital undergoing treatment for her anorexia, her supervisor, Dr. Nell (Stephen Fry), has decided she’s well enough to return to school with her best friends Becca (Lauryn Ajufo), Cam (Harry Cadby), and Will (Noah Thomas). Cooped up inside for what seemed like an eternity, Mia is bursting with enthusiasm about finally undergoing many teenage rites of passage like first dates and big parties. Continue Reading →

There’s a moment in Sex Education Season 4’s first episode where a dark thought crosses one mind. “Wait…was this always JUST a sitcom?” Continue Reading →

The Witcher returns for its third season,  Henry Cavill’s final run as Geralt of Rivera, Witcher, before Liam Hemsworth steps into the White Wolf’s big boots. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich introduces yet another tonal shift to the series, which has suffered a bit of an identity crisis since its bombastic first season. After the uneven season two and the head-scratching prequel spinoff Blood Origins, Season three takes a step back from intricate political intrigue to deliver a more straightforward narrative.   Continue Reading →

You Season 4 Part 1 depicted its antihero protagonist, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), at his most straightforwardly heroic. He was teaching classes, avoiding romance, and trying not to commit any more murders. At least, that’s what Joe told himself and the audience in his omnipresent narration. It was a notable and perplexing turn for a character who viewers first met stalking, kidnapping, and murdering the object of his demented affections.  Continue Reading →

The one thing that no one can deny is Stranger Things Season 4 remains aggressively itself right up to the end. Its final two episodes, feature-length films onto themselves, serve everything that one could enjoy about the first seven episodes with a side of everything that frustrates and annoys. The good news is that the bad bits remain a side dish, not the main course. The better news is that ratio tips even further in favor of what’s enjoyable. Continue Reading →

Previous seasons of Netflix’s Ozark followed Martin and Wendy Byrde’s (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney) quest to survive death and prove their family’s worth to the cartel and their violent rivals. Now, in the fourth and final season, the Byrdes must figure out if they can survive without their dark, criminal lives. They sacrificed a lot to get to the top—but what would they sacrifice to stay there? Thanks to this ask and its answers, Ozark Season 4 Part 1 is slow-burn suspense at its finest, with the Byrde’s maneuvering to stay on top, no matter the personal costs.  Continue Reading →

Full disclosure: I was going to start this review with a Peloton joke given show creator Darren Star’s recent track record. Then out of nowhere, there was an actual Peloton knock-off storyline in this season of Emily in Paris. So my joke told itself. Points to you, Emily in Paris. Continue Reading →

KinoKultur is a thematic exploration of the queer, camp, weird, and radical releases Kino Lorber has to offer. Dinosaurs are the ultimate symbols of The Past. They represent deep time, natural history, and the chaos of the wild. It's no wonder that cinema has always been fascinated by them. One of the first exhibitions of what we might now call "cinema" was presented in 1922 by Sherlock Holmes' own Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “footage of moving dinosaurs” from the exhibition at the center of his 1912 novella, The Lost World. From the very beginning of the medium, creatives have sought to reanimate the awesome creatures on the silver screen. When dinosaurs appear on film, they frequently bring with them a host of cultural and ideological anxieties. Dinosaurs threaten humanity's imperial dominance on the planet. When they appear, we become prey. And they remind us that even the mightiest powers can be reduced to dust. Continue Reading →

In the first three episodes of Season 4 provided to critics, Good Girls one begins to feel a creeping sense of the same. The “girls”—Ruby (Retta), Beth (Christina Hendricks), and Annie (Mae Whitman)—are still jockeying for power with Rio (Manny Montana). Beth is finding herself, once more, in a sexually charge situation with a known felon—this time a hired killer named Mr. Fitzpatrick (Andrew McCarthy)—while her husband Dean (Matthew Lillard) is left in the dark in that and so many other ways. Ruby and Stan’s (Reno Wilson) child, this time their son, is getting in trouble, the kind of trouble their criminal endeavors make both easier and harder to deal with. A zealous federal agent, Phoebe Donnegan (Lauren Lapkus), is closing in on them all, too. Continue Reading →

If anybody could find something new to add to pop culture’s fixation with serial killers and true crime, it would likely be David Fincher. Se7en announced him as a major director while Zodiac revealed him as a master. The Fincher style – dark lighting and sickly colors, obsessive attention to detail, unblinking looks at violence – has served as a template not just for other movies, but also for TV shows of both the prestigious and potboiler variety and for the ever-increasing number of investigative podcasts and Netflix documentaries. In 2017, Fincher returned to the serial killer subgenre by taking his project Mindhunter to the streaming service. Continue Reading →