Here is my monthly round up of new offerings on Netflix.

Enola Holmes 2
This sequel to Netflix’s 2020 hit, sees Millie Bobby Brown return as Sherlock Holmes’ sister. She has now set up her own detective agency but is struggling for clients until a young girl asks Enola to find her missing sister. This is very much in the spirit of the first film and gallops along at a similar pace.

It does manage to improve on the original as we do not have the origin story and Jack Thorne’s witty screenplay incorporates a version of the true story of Sarah Chapman who successfully led industrial action for match girls in 1888. Very silly at times but a lot of fun, with Brown delighting in the lead role and with dependable support from David Thewlis and Adeel Akhtar.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10

The Curse of Bridge Hollow
Aimed at a similar market, The Curse of Bridge Hollow is quite a pleasing comedy horror. Marlon Wayons and Kelly Rowland play a couple who have moved to a small town with their daughter (Priah Ferguson). The residents are obsessed with Halloween, and, on the big night, the decorations start coming to life to terrorize the population. This is quite fun, especially the first half and has just enough laughs and chills for a young audience. Lauren Lapkus is a stand out in a small role as the town mayor.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Based on an extraordinary true story, The Good Nurse is a low key but increasingly gripping thriller from Danish director Tobias Lindholm, making his English language debut. Jessica Chastain stars as Amy Loughren, a nurse struggling with a heart condition that she is trying to conceal and an overwhelming workload. Her life becomes easier when personable Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) joins her, helping with her patients and her healthcare. However, Charlie has had a strange career, rapidly moving from job to job and when a patient dies unexpectedly, things start to unravel.

This is shocking stuff, primarily how hospitals covered up Cullen’s murderous ways in order to avoid any liabilities. Redmayne is an actor that I do not always appreciate but he is terrific, as is, Chastain, though that is as expected. Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich are also great as the dogged cops on the case. For a documentary on the same subject, you can watch Capturing the Killer Nurse. This shows how The Good Nurse was broadly true to the real story and features extensive appearances from Loughren. There are a few nuggets that the feature film did not include and some very frank interviews, but you do not really need to watch both.

The Good Nurse: 8 out of 10
Capturing the Killer Nurse: 7 out of 10

Now for some other documentaries on Netflix. The story documented in Ron Howard’s excellent Thirteen Lives, that can be seen on Amazon Prime, is also recounted in The Trapped 13. This boasts great access to the boys who calmly but starkly recall the terrible events and some of the footage from the rescue is compelling. I think that whichever version you watch first, you will probably prefer.

The U.S.A’s involvement in the slave trade had been banned by Congress through the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves enacted in 1808, but an illegal trade continued to flourish. As late as 1860, 100 slaves from Benin were transported to Mobile, Alabama aboard the Clotilda owned by local landowner Timothy Meaher. To cover up his crime, Meaher ordered for the boat to be burned. Descendant follows the descendants of those slaves, looking at their heritage and story.

The film is framed around the discovery of the ship, but it is about so much more, including how the people continue to be mistreated to this day and how the Meaher family continue to profit from the crime. Elvis Mitchell has written, directed and narrates Is That Black Enough for You?!? This is a very comprehensive examination of the portrayal of black people in American movies. There are a wealth of good clips and some decent contributions from famous faces. So, it is entertaining, though a little overlong and does not have much that is new for the serious film fan.

The Trapped 13: 8 out of 10
Descendant: 7.5 out of 10
Is That Black Enough for You?!?: 6.5 out of 10

Over the last couple of years, Netflix seem to be muscling into the Hallmark Christmas movie territory and we already have two films this year that easily could have been on that channel. Falling for Christmas re-uses the well-worn Overboard plot of a spoilt rich woman losing her memory and finding love with a kind, poorer man. In this instance, Lindsay Lohan stars as Sierra Belmont, an heiress who ends up recuperating at a struggling lodge run by Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet). The opening scenes are pretty shaky and there is, inevitably, a cloyingly cute kid. However, Lohan is a fine physical comedian and she has good chemistry with Overstreet.

Christmas with You stars Freddie Prinze Jr as Miguel, a widowed (of course) school music teacher bringing up a 14 year old daughter, Cristina (Deja Monique Cruz). Pop star Angelina Costa (Aimee Garcia) is struggling to write new material and when she sees an online tribute from Cristina see travels to meet her. When she finds Miguel’s partially written song, she persuades him to collaborate with her, and soon something more than a working relationship develops. All totally predictable but the musical scenes are surprisingly bearable and Garcia is excellent.

Falling for Christmas: 6 out of 10
Christmas with You: 5.5 out of 10

Me Time
Sonny Fisher (Kevin Hart) lives a routine life as a house husband. When his wife Maya (Regina Hall) takes the kids away for a break, Sonny reconnects with old friend Huck Dembo (Mark Wahlberg) for a wild weekend. This is a real misfire as joke after joke falls flat. Far too much screen time is given to Hart, but even the more talented Wahlberg and Hall fail to raise much more than a smile.
Rating: 4 out of 10

The Takeover
In this fast moving Dutch techno thriller, ethical hacker Mel Bandison (Holly Mae Brood), is framed for murder. She has to go on the run and uncover a conspiracy. That is a well used plot and I am sure that the hacking scenes are pretty far fetched, but it is pretty suspenseful. Director Annemarie van de Mond keeps things zipping along, especially when a bus runs out of control. Lawrence Sheldon makes an effective oily villain.
Rating: 7 out of 10

Blackout
It must be amnesia month on Netflix, as in Blackout, John Cain (Josh Duhamel) wakes in hospital in Mexico after a car crash having lost his memory and with the drug cartel after him. Cue carnage as John tries to figure out who he is and who he can trust, whilst trying to stay alive. Although the budget looks very low and the screenplay is mediocre at best, some decent hand to hand combat scenes and the presence of Duhamel keeps it watchable. Also in the cast is an underused Abbie Cornish and a desiccated Nick Nolte.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10

All Quiet on the Western Front
This third adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel is the first one made in German, though it bares less of a resemblance to the book than the previous versions. A group of young German men enthusiastically enlist in the army in 1917, but soon experience the horrors of war. Despite some glaring historical inaccuracies, this is well-made and sobering, especially for those unacquainted with the brilliant and ground breaking 1930 movie. The highpoint for me was a sequence near the start showing how a dead soldier’s uniform gets to be re-used. After that, I found it more impressive than emotionally engaging.
Rating: 8 out of 10

The Wonder
Florence Pugh stars as English nurse Elizabeth Wright, who is summoned to a small Irish town in 1862. There, an 11 year old girl, Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy) claims not to have eaten for 4 months and Elizabeth is tasked with keeping a watch over her to see if Anna’s claims are true. What follows is an examination on whether faith is a force for good and how far you should go to demonstrate it. It is a multi-layered story touching on child abuse and with parallels to the famine from 20 years previously that left a million Irish people dead.

Pugh is wonderful, as always, and Cassidy looks to be an extraordinary young talent. There is also a great supporting cast that includes Toby Jones, Niamh Algar and Ciaran Hinds. Matthew Herbert’s unconventional score is very striking, and Ari Wegner’s muted cinematography is impressive. However, there are a couple of things that really did not work. The framing device set on a sound stage has a whiff of drama school pretentiousness about it. Also the happy ending feels tacked on, as if from another film.
Rating: 7 out of 10

Route 10
Nasser (Baraa Alem) and his sister Maryam (Fatima AlBanawi) are about to travel to their father’s wedding. When their flight is cancelled, they have to take an 8 hour road trip from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, along Route 10, the longest stretch of road in the world. But a mysterious stranger begins to pursue and then terrorise them. We have all seen this plot before, most notably in Steven Spielberg’s Duel but this is a very effective version. With an 82 minute run time, there is no excess fat as writer/director Omar Naim keeps the action speeding along. Alem and AlBanawi are both really good in their roles, keeping their decisions pretty believable. The only let down is the final action scene which is confused and rushed, though the wedding scene afterwards, and the ambiguity of the ending, make up for that.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10

And now for a round up of the rest on offer this month.

A Breath of Fresh Air is an Italian comedy drama about two brothers trying to save their pizza restaurant and family farm, both of which are struggling financially. I did not find their plight interesting or funny. If you like scenes so dimly lit you can barely make out the characters and dialogue so mumbled you can barely hear it, then the grim Australian crime drama The Stranger might be for you. It bored me. Seeing the name Tyler Perry in the credits is enough to strike fear into me. Fortunately, A Jazzman’s Blues is not one of his Madea movies but this meandering tale of an unsolved murder is dreadfully slow.

Old People is a German horror about a group of bloodthirsty pensioners. It starts well with a shocking kill scene but gets really bogged down after that. In Someone Borrowed, a confirmed and sexist bachelor gets an actress to pose as his girlfriend in order not to be cut out of his dying mother’s will. This Brazilian romcom has an over familiar plot that the charmless lead, Caio Castro, cannot overcome. Polish exorcism horror Hellhole is relentlessly gloomy and adds nothing new to the genre. Cici is an uneven and tediously rambling Turkish drama. It covers a 30 year period and it felt that long to watch it.

The Perfumier is the second take on Patrick Suskind’s novel after 2006’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. It still seems like an odd premise and this version adds nothing. There have been some good Stephen King adaptations in recent years. Mr Harrigan’s Phone is not one of them. The premise of receiving texts from a dead person’s phone has potential to be scary but this film is just plodding and maudlin. If you want a cheap Harry Potter knock off, you surely could do better than The School for Good and Evil which features a customary annoying voice over. Korean teen romantic drama 20th Century Girl involves a girl trying to find out information on a boy that her best friend has fallen for. Predictable and sentimental.

Beyond the Universe is a sickly sweet Brazilian drama about a pianist with lupus who falls for her doctor. South African crime epic Wild is the Wind seemed promising but the mixture of cop procedural and drama about racism did not gel and it was about half an hour too long. In the Nigerian comedy Dinner At My Place, a man’s plans to propose to his girlfriend over dinner are hindered by his ex turning up. The acting is either very stilted or way over the top. Turkish drama Don’t Leave features a man trying to work out why his girlfriend broke up with him. I worked it out pretty quickly…he is very dull!

In Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman, the titular character, following the death of the king, must sacrifice himself to serve his ruler in the afterlife. Tedious in the extreme. Thai comedy The Lost Lotteries, about a group of lottery winners trying to steal back their tickets from a crime boss was way too frantic for me. The strangely titled The Violence Action had a far from original, though decent, premise of a seemingly innocent young girl working as an assassin and Kanna Hashimoto is pretty good in the lead role. However, Tôichirô Rutô’s annoyingly tricksy and flashy direction made it almost unwatchable.

Ratings, out of 10:
A Breath of Fresh Air: 3
The Stranger: 4
20th Century Girl: 3.5
Mr Harrigan’s Phone: 3.5
The School for Good and Evil: 2
The Perfumier: 3
Someone Borrowed: 3.5
Old People: 3
Don’t Leave: 3
Lost Bullet 2:
A Jazzman’s Blues: 4
Hellhole: 3.5
Cici: 1.5
Beyond the Universe: 3
Wild is the Wind: 4
Dinner At My Place: 2.5
Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman: 2
The Lost Lotteries: 2.5
The Violence Action: 4