It is time for a round up of new films that I have seen on Netflix this month.
Time Cut
High school senior student Lucy Field (Madison Bailey) accidentally finds a time machine and travels back to 2003, the year her sister was murdered by an unknown serial killer. She is left with a dilemma, does she let her sister die still or intervene with potential catastrophic consequences for the future? This felt very similar to Totally Killer from last year and, though it is reasonably engaging, it does not measure up to that fun movie. The kills are tame and the ending makes absolutely no sense.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
And Mrs
Aisling Bea stars in this British romcom as a bride to be. When her fiancé drops dead, she insists on going ahead with the wedding anyway, much to the bewilderment of her friends and family. This was much better than the silly premise suggested. It is both funny and quite perceptive on the effects of grief. Bea is sharply amusing, Billie Lourd great as the deceased groom’s sister and I liked Peter Egan’s empathetic performance as her Dad.
Rating: 7 out of 10
The Buckingham Murders
A grieving cop loses her child to murder and moves to another town where she investigates the disappearance of a young boy. Police procedurals are one of my favourite genres but seeing that this was set in the UK but Indian made with a largely Indian cast, I approached it with trepidation as I am still scarred by last year’s abysmal Operation Mayfair! This shares some issues with that that film as the dialogue and character motivations are a bit sketchy, but the central story and lead performance by Kareena Kapoor are both good.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Joy
Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton star in this true story about the world’s first in vitro fertilisation baby Louise Joy Brown. It is that star studded cast who play the three key people who made the scientific breakthrough possible that will probably be the draw for this drama and they are the main reason to watch it. Jack Thorne’s screenplay is workmanlike but he manages to boil a decade of research and experiments into just under two hours. I found the most interesting aspect was how the team had to face hostility from the establishment, press and public right up to their first success with Louise in 1978 and would like to have seen more of that. However, this is a solidly mounted true story.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
10 Days of a Curious Man
I was delighted to see this pop up on Netflix because I had really enjoyed the previous two entries in the series, 10 Days of a Good Man and 10 Days of a Bad Man, last year. Nejat Isler returns as Sadik Adil Ocal, though instead of a world weary private investigator, he is now a jaded author who gets involved in a case of a missing woman. His change of profession makes little difference as he is soon immersed in a twisty mystery, though I did wonder if what I was watching was one of his plots rather than what was really happening. The standard from the last two films is maintained and Isler and Ilayda Akdogan are both terrific.
Rating: 8 out of 10