This is the last of my monthly Netflix round ups of 2022, so I have been catching up with a lot of titles that have been on my watch list for a while.

The Swimmers
There have been a number of great films about the immigrant experience recently, including Flee and Aisha, and this is another example. Sisters Yusra (Nathalie Issa) and Sara (Manal Issa) Mardini were champion swimmers in Syria. With their homeland becoming more and more dangerous they decide to leave, with their cousin Nizar (Ahmed Malek). With their sights set on Germany as a final destination, they find a smuggler who promises to get them to Greece on a boat, amongst other refugees from all over the world. That traumatic boat trip is the highlight of the film as it is extremely tense. After that, it is always interesting enough but Yusra’s attempts to make it to the Olympics seems comparatively inconsequential.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Off Track (Ur spår)
In this Swedish drama, Lisa (Katia Winter) is a struggling single mother who drinks too much and neglects her daughter. Her brother, Daniel (Fredrik Hallgren) and his wife Klara (Rakel Warmlander) have been trying to get pregnant for years and are now trying in-vitro fertilisation. Daniel suggests to Lisa that she should turn her life around, starting with entering a skiing competition with him. When Klara loses her child on the eve of the race, Daniel goes anyway, endangering their marriage. The emphasis is more on relationships and Lisa getting her life together rather then the outcome of the race, though that plotline starts to dominate towards the end. This is pretty well played with an unusual storyline.
Rating: 6 out of 10

Robbing Mussolini
You know that this World War 2 heist movie is not taking itself seriously pretty early on. A caption calls the film ‘true-ish’ and cabaret singer Yvonne (Matilda De Angelis) belts out a version of Paint it Black, a song written more than two decades after the end of the war. That sets the tone for the rest of the film. It follows the usual formula of coming up with a daring idea, formulating a plan and getting the gang together to carry out the heist, before we see how smoothly things should go. Of course, the actual execution of the plot is anything but smooth. There is never a dull moment in Renato De Maria’s seriously fun film, with the performance of De Angelis and David Holmes’s score particular highlights.
Rating: 8 out of 10

God’s Crooked Lines
In this Spanish thriller, Bárbara Lennie stars as Alice. She is a private investigator who is looking into the death of a patient at a psychiatric institution. To try to find the truth, she fakes a mental illness to get herself committed, but once inside her sanity comes into doubt. This is a very enjoyable tale with numerous twists provided by Guillem Clua’s, Oriol Paulo’s and Lara Sendim’s screenplay that will keep you guessing up to the end. Fernando Velázquez’s score gives it an appropriately Hitchcockian feel.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Lady Chatterley’s Lover
For such a celebrated and notorious book, it is a surprise that there have been relatively few movie adaptations of it. This version has been brought to the screen by director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and writer David Magee. It is handsomely mounted and decently acted by Emma Corrin as Lady Chatterley, Matthew Duckett as her possessive husband and Jack O’Connell as Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper. However well the story is presented, though, it remains a dull drama that is really only notable for the frank sexual scenes.
Rating: 5 out of 10

Also on Netflix….
The Chalk Line is a disappointing Spanish horror film about a couple taking in a young girl they find but she is extremely troubled, obsessing that a monster will get her. Very dour and with few chills. Also from Spain is Who’s a Good Boy? A supposed comedy about a young lad wanting to lose his virginity before the end of the school year. As cringeworthy as it sounds. In I Used To Be Famous, a former popstar is trying to make a comeback and teams up with an autistic drummer. This could have been uplifting but nothing rings true.

It seems like there is no end to the feature length documentaries on Netflix but a lot of them are not satisfying. I am Vanessa Guillen tells an important story about a female soldier being sexually harassed and then killed by a fellow soldier. It is too padded out, though, with friends and family telling us how wonderful Vanessa was, rather than examining the case. A Trip to Infinity is an examination of infinity. Science nerds may get something from it, but I found it annoying. Equally irritating are all the participants in The Masked Scammer about conman Gilbert Chikli. The quirky shooting style does not make it any more palatable.

Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich is competently enough made but, for anyone keeping up with the news, has nothing new to offer. Better, largely because the story is much less familiar, is In Her Hands. 26 year old Zarifa Ghafari was one of the few female mayors in Afghanistan and the youngest when she took the job. We see her struggle as western forces withdraw and The Taliban start to take control. It lacks a little focus early on but is worth sticking with. Finally for the docs, Stutz really is scraping the bottom of the barrel as Jonah Hill and his therapist talk about psychiatric techniques and Hill’s issues. I am sure it was more interesting to them than the audience. The Lost Patient has a great premise of a 19 year old boy waking up after three years in a coma only to be told that all of his family have been murdered apart from his sister, who is missing. Sluggish and lacking in suspense.

Polish thriller, Lesson Plan is about a cop taking his teacher friend’s job after he is killed in order to investigate the murder. Extremely run-of-the-mill. I am not a fan of the director particularly and the original cartoon is the weakest of Disney’s golden period so my expectations for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio were low. They were met as I found it pretty pedestrian stuff despite the intricate stop motion animation. Warriors of the Future is an action movie set in a post apocalyptic future. It is not as relentlessly grim as most films in that genre, but has nothing new to offer. In A Man of Action, an anarchist targets a bank with a counterfeiting operation. This Robin Hood tale takes a long while to get going but is reasonably diverting in the end.

The curiously named Dhoka Round D Corner is that rarest of beasts, an Indian film clocking in at well under two hours! However, this thriller about a housewife being taken hostage is poorly acted and fussily directed. I am not sure who the target audience is for Slumberland. The story of Nemo, a young girl. discovering a secret dream world feels like it should be aimed at younger kids, but that are some disturbing images. Much better than the fanciful elements is the relationship between Nemo (Marlow Barkley) and her uncle played by Chris O’Dowd. Some sequels you can watch without seeing the previous film but the dense French cop thriller, Lost Bullet 2, is not one of them. Only for fans of the original. Burning Patience is apparently based on a celebrated Chilean novel. I have no plans to read it in case the story of an aspiring poet is as drippy as the movie.

    Ratings out of 10:

The Chalk Line: 4.5
A Trip to Infinity: 3
I Used To Be Famous: 3.5
Slumberland: 4
I am Vanessa Guillen: 4.5
Stutz: 2
In Her Hands: 5.5
Lost Bullet 2: 5
The Lost Patient: 2
Who’s a Good Boy?: 2.5
Lesson Plan: 3
A Man of Action: 4.5
The Masked Scammer: 2
Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich: 4
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: 2
Warriors of the Future: 3
Dhoka Round D Corner: 4
Burning Patience: 2.5