130 Best Releases Translations Dutch on Hulu (Page 3)
Infinity Pool
SimilarBrazil (1985), Godzilla Raids Again (1955),
Brandon Cronenberg & Chloe Domont direct stylish films about sex & violence among the bourgeoise wealthy.
A growing trend in Hollywood film & TV of late has been to put a mirror in front of the idle rich and mock the privileged and avaricious lifestyles they live. Some may say this is happening now because of honest self-reflection in the face of growing and untenable wealth-inequality in this country, but that just sounds gullible to me. It’s probably more so that hedonistic and openly, publicly vapid displays of self-promotion and consumerist propaganda through social media has made it easier to become famous and sponsored by doing less than ever before.
Brandon Cronenberg probably has imposter syndrome. In Infinity Pool, his central character James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is a writer plagued by a lack of inspiration and haunted by a review that boils his career down to only having a rich father-in-law, which affords him the luxury of not needing a real job. His hang-up over this connection through his wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman), explodes in the open when they have a fight and he tells her to “run back to Daddy.” In formally and thematically finding a voice unto himself apart from his lineage, the younger Cronenberg has cultivated a filmography where the corporeal form is at odds with the sense of identity. His characters constantly feel like empty vessels and thus, the trauma their bodies endure are more a dissociative terror than a deeply internally felt one. Continue Reading →
Accused
SimilarCruel Summer, Star and Sky: Star in My Mind,
American remakes of British television shows haven’t earned the best reputation despite a few gems over the years. The newest series to make it successfully across the pond, FOX’s new crime drama, Accused, does so with a premise you just can’t mess up. Continue Reading →
Vesper
Vesper (Raffiella Chapman, His Dark Materials), a lone teenager clad head to toe in weatherbeaten cold-weather gear, expertly ferrets her way through a blighted field. She's looking for the remains of dead crops—critical samples for her ongoing bio-engineering research. A floating drone—humanized by an awkward, endearingly childish face that's been carved on it—accompanies her. Her father, Darius (Richard Brake), pilots the drone. Left paralyzed and fragile by war and a relentless artificial biosphere, Darius does what he can for his daughter. In the distance stand colossal machines long left to rust, their purpose obscure. Continue Reading →
Abbott Elementary
Andor (Disney+)
It’s strange how politics and bureaucracy are, in part, what made the Star Wars prequels such a stultifying affair while they give Andor a jolt that’s a large part of its charm. Nonetheless, thanks to excellent performances from the likes of Denise Gough as Imperial officer Dedra Meero and Kyle Soller as disgraced space cop Syril Karn, that was the reality of 2022. Continue Reading →
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Watch afterFriends, Only Murders in the Building, Reacher,
Secret Invasion Succession, The Morning Show, The Sopranos, Tulsa King,
StudioABC Signature, FX Productions,
Fleishman Is in Trouble, the adaptation of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s novel starring Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, and Lizzy Caplan, has a first-act problem. Or rather, a first-episode problem. Continue Reading →
Triangle of Sadness
SimilarBorat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Fargo (1996), The Pianist (2002),
StudioARTE France Cinéma, BBC Film, BFI,
As we lurch our way through the sixth or seventh wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve only just begun to see how much billion dollar companies (and billionaires themselves) profited from the chaos, while smaller businesses and individuals took devastating financial hits. A class war has erupted, if not in real life (yet) then certainly on social media, marked by endless heated debates over privilege, the victims and villains of capitalism, and who the “elite” really are. Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness satirizes this very unsettling period in time, putting a cheeky spin on class rage, but with an acidic undertaste that lingers long after it’s over. Continue Reading →
Hellraiser
SimilarCube (1997), Ghost (1990),
First things first: Hellraiser (2022) doesn’t need to be Hellraiser (1987). The goal of a remake/reboot/what-have-you should be to put a unique sheen on the material, to make it one's own, not a carbon copy of what’s already been done. That being said…it’s hard not to watch David Bruckner’s new Hellraiser without wishing just a little bit for what used to be. Continue Reading →
See How They Run
StudioSearchlight Pictures, TSG Entertainment,
“You’ve seen one you seen them all," says the dastardly movie director from beyond the grave. It’s the recently murdered Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody), telling us early in the film about how stale the murder mystery genre was even by the 1950s, when See How They Run takes place. It’s also a warning to the audience that this movie will not be adding anything new, revelatory, or exciting to whodunnit cinema. Everything here has been done before, and better. Continue Reading →
Wedding Season
Everyone’s had that “wedding season” experience. You meet a stranger at the start of the summer and have a great time flirting—perhaps more—with them by the bar and on the dance floor. It feels like a fun one-time thing, but then you keep running into each other at every other reception over the next few months. Before you know it, you’re having a full-fledged affair and running from the police because you’re both suspected of murdering an entire wedding party. You know, standard mid-20s wedding season fun. Continue Reading →
The Patient
The Patient’s Dr. Alan Strauss (Steve Carrell) is a man of ritual. One can tell it from how he cuts his fruit, interacts with clients, and even walks through his home. The deliberate editing from Amanda Pollack and Daniel A. Valverde in the pilot help emphasize this point. Ritual upon ritual surrounds him. Continue Reading →
Spin Me Round
SimilarBack to the Future Part III (1990), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), The Big Blue (1988),
Amber’s (Alison Brie) dead-eyed stare in the opening montage of Spin Me Round tells you everything you need to know about where she’s at in life. She’s the manager of a fast-casual “Italian” restaurant, and from what we see about how they make the alfredo sauce, the quotes are very much warranted. Her life is small and dull and she’s secretly ready and hoping for an adventure to sweep her off her feet. When Amber wins a trip to Tuscany, the film doesn’t take her or the audience on the journey you’d expect, which creates something of a mess for everyone. Continue Reading →
Rogue Agent
In Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn’s spy thriller Rogue Agent, English actor James Norton plays Robert Hendy-Freegard. Or, more aptly, Norton plays every version of Hendy-Freegard — lovable, charming, terrifying, convincing, evil. Norton’s up to the task, and the film rewards a level of misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge about Hendy-Freegard and his history (he has already been made into a docuseries). With each passing moment, Norton becomes more persuasive, more potent in his convictions, and more believable in his alleged employment as an MI5 agent constantly on the run. Continue Reading →
This Fool
Similar3rd Rock from the Sun, Phil of the Future,
StudioABC Signature,
Chris Estrada is a Los Angeles-born and raised comedian specializing in a brand of sincere and upfront humor. His new series, This Fool, serves as a semi-autobiographical story for the actor, a way to channel and share his life experience through television. Lucky for him, it's a likable one, full of moments both touching and hilarious. Continue Reading →
I Love My Dad
For writer/director/star James Morosini, I Love My Dad acts as therapy. The self-reflexive comedy-drama finds Morosini telling a story of a father catfishing his son to get back into his good graces, a true-ish story from his own life. Morosini is joined by Patton Oswalt, playing his pseudo-dad named Chuck, in one of the veteran comedian’s meatier roles of the last decade. Oswalt has the unenviable job of being distant yet hoping to remain close, of playing the roles of Franklin’s (Morosini) online girlfriend and absent father. He performs it with gentle, manic, absurd brilliance. Continue Reading →
Reservation Dogs
SimilarEcho, Son of the Morning Star,
StudioFX Productions,
Season Two of Reservation Dogs opens with the aftermath of last season. Elora (Devery Jacobs) left fellow Rez Dogs Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), and Cheese (Lane Factor) high and dry as she ran away to Cali with Jackie (Elva Guerra), one of their group's sworn enemies. They’re all trying to grow up and move on from their haunted pasts, and their friend Daniel’s (Dalton Cramer) death still lingers. Will a prayer and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” be enough to lift the curse and bring the Rez Dogs back together? It’s a slow-burn season, balancing the drama and the comedy of the teens coming of age both on and off the reservation. Continue Reading →
What We Do in the Shadows
NetworkFX,
StudioFX Productions,
Things are bad, folks. They’re relentlessly bad, with no sign that it’s going to let up any time soon. All we can do to stop ourselves from spiraling into the abyss is cling to the little things in life, like an ice cream cone, petting a dog, or taking a long bath. Add to that list is What We Do in the Shadows, now in its fourth season, and still just as fresh and funny as ever, with dirty jokes that belie its gentle, loving core. Continue Reading →
Only Murders in the Building
With the first season of Only Murders in the Building, creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman found success through a tricky balance -- between young and old, between thriller and comedy, between murder and levity. With Selena Gomez and Martin Short returning to join Martin as the unlikely podcasting trio, the Hulu series leans on the chemistry of its three stars. The resulting second season overachieves, brimming with confidence, comedy, scares, and a balanced tone. Continue Reading →
Competencia oficial
As comic premises go, the notion of portraying people in the movie industry as pretentious vain, shallow, sex-crazed glory-hungry goofballs is about as close to shooting fish in a barrel as one can possibly get. Therefore, the trick to pulling off something along these lines is not by pretending that one is making some bold artistic statement, but by striving to make sure that it is actually funny. Continue Reading →
Crimes of the Future
SimilarMississippi Burning (1988), Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Rope (1948),
StudioIngenious Media,
As Marvel holds its iron grip on theaters, and Netflix seems determined to focus its dwindling profits on churning out generic action movies starring various iterations of Ryan Reynolds, cineastes lament the loss of “art” films, those outliers that, whether good or bad, generate far more lively after-movie conversation than Spider-Man ever could. And yet, right now we seem to be in the middle of a weird movie renaissance. We have the joyful weirdness of Everything Everywhere All at Once, the all too topical weirdness of Alex Garland’s Men, and the over the top spectacle weirdness of Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming Elvis. What better time could there be for David Cronenberg to come roaring back to form with some body horror weirdness in Crimes of the Future? Continue Reading →
The Valet
Eugenio Derbez has followed all the proper steps for any comedic leading man, including breaking out with a movie whose success nobody saw coming (Instructions Not Included) to side roles in long-forgotten blockbusters (Geostorm). Now he's taken a cue from many other modern stars of the genre like Adam Sandler or Melissa McCarthy and moved to 'streaming service A-lister' with Hulu's latest, The Valet. Continue Reading →
Les Olympiades
SimilarAmélie (2001), East of Eden (1955), The Dark Knight (2008), The Good German (2006), The Party (1980), The Party 2 (1982),
Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District opens on a Parisian building. More specifically, on a young woman named Émilie (Lucie Zhang in her feature debut), a struggling telemarketer, singing naked in her apartment. Next to her is Camille (Makita Samba), a literary professor, her new roommate, new lover, future ex-roommate, and future ex-lover. Broken credits chop up the action, staggered throughout the first lengthy scene. There’s an ephemeral nature to all of it, the sex and romance just as fleeting as the credits only fully shown for a moment, though Audiard has no problem spending longer with the revolving bodies of this story. Continue Reading →