Based on the novel by Emma Donoghue, THE WONDER (2022) is a psychological period drama pitting faith versus reason. Despite a difficult beginning, it finds its legs with a climax that had me on the edge of my seat. Overall, while it’s a bit sleepy in its first two acts, the whole comes together nicely, and overall it’s pretty darn good.

It’s 1862, and Elizabeth (Florence Pugh, who’s outstanding in the role), a British nurse, travels to a dreary rural village in Ireland to observe a young girl who appears not to eat nor need food to survive. As this is not that long after the Irish famine, you can imagine the impact this has on a religious country’s people, who travel far and wide to visit the miraculous girl. Apparently, this was a thing in the Victorian era; they were called the “fasting girls.”

Elizabeth’s task is to work with a nun in a 24-hour watch to determine if indeed some type of miracle is occurring. The town council set it up, with most of them fairly invested in the girl being the real deal, from the town priest who sees evidence of God to the town doctor who sees potential of discovering a new human faculty. Elizabeth suspects foul play and uncovers the truth of a family trapped by their beliefs in shame and repentance.

The movie takes its time, kind of a slow burner, which Pugh carries until the reveals dramatically ramp up the tension toward the climax. Overall, it’s quite a powerful story about salvation and the need for the right kind of it.

I do have one major quibble, though, which is how the story begins. We’re shown a movie production warehouse and given a narrated monologue about stories before the camera zooms in one of a constructed set to start the story. This did nothing for me and honestly wrecked my willing suspension of disbelief for almost the entire first act. At the end, they come back to it, and the device almost ruined things again. I just don’t see why they did that. It’s artsy and makes a point but man, does it throw things off.

Anyway, I liked THE WONDER one and found it powerful, and you might too.

From the creators of the German series DARK, 1899 is another mind-bending drama, though it leans into its LOST-type elements so heavily it comes dangerously close to jumping the shark. Overall, I liked it, and I’m curious to see more, but given how awesome DARK was, my expectations were a bit high.

DARK simultaneously frustrated the hell out of me and blew my mind. The German series about the time travel bootstrap paradox frequently annoyed me as the actors constantly showed up out of nowhere to make long philosophical-sounding speeches and otherwise scowl deeply at each other. I stuck it out, and by the end, when the beautiful whole was on display, I was pretty amazed. The show’s creators had meticulously built a corrupt world complete with family trees and a time loop that had only one way of ending. Looking at it as a whole, it was like seeing the inside of an old watch ticking.

So when 1899 came along, what appeared to be a period drama about a passenger ship that comes across a sister ghost ship certainly intrigued me. We’re given a fairly large cast of characters, focusing mostly on Maura, a doctor, and the ship’s captain. All of them, we find out, fled some trauma to take this trip to America. When they explore the ghost ship, things get crazy, and Maura learns her world may not be what it seems.

Overall, I liked it a lot. None of the characters stood out as particularly strong for me, but they’re all sympathetic enough, and there’s enough weirdness happening that every time you think you’re onto what the writers are planning, things get even weirder. I’m curious where it’s going to go next and excited again about seeing the whole when it’s complete, exactly how big this thing is going to get from creatives who think very big. That being said, the cast feels a bit too big, there are a lot of LOST-type tropes, and there are some annoying TV tropes like a guy shows up saying I have all the answers and a major character who’s been looking for all the answers freaks out and locks him up instead of hearing him out. And the nonstop scowling is back.

So I recommend this one. It’s not perfect, but I respect DARK’s creators enough to know they have some big things planned, and I’m looking forward to seeing how deep the iceberg goes.

In PIG (2021), a truffle hunter living alone in the Pacific Northwest wilderness must go to Portland after his foraging pig is kidnapped. The result for me was a lot of good stuff that just didn’t come together as a whole. Let me explain.

Rob (Nicholas Cage) lives a hermit life in a cabin in the woods outside Portland with his beloved pig, which he trained to sniff out truffle mushrooms. These mushrooms are highly prized by high-end restaurants and therefore fetch a terrific price. Unfortunately, this attracts the interest of kidnappers out to make a buck on the pig and puts Rob on a quest to Portland to get her back.

The setup is terrific stuff. The mushroom harvesting industry in the wilderness, the hardcore world of restaurant workers, the underlying savagery among powerful chefs, and a relentless quest to get a beloved pig back where she belongs. And of course Nicholas Cage, whom (as it’s Nicholas Cage) we expect to slaughter his way through Portland but instead delivers a great understated, brooding performance, defeating his opponents psychologically by hitting them where they’re weakest.

The only problem is after the first act, the seams start to fray. Rob’s search is a spiritual journey to get past the grief that drove him into the wilderness, but the supporting pieces that get us there started to feel disjointed, heavy handed, and even contrived, notably Rob’s young supplier who is helping him, and the supplier’s father. Everyone is either brooding, crying, or angry at the edge of violence in a gloomy Portland, and it just didn’t feel natural for me.

So overall, PIG was okay for me but lacked an organic quality to the storytelling that could have made it great. Reviewers and audiences generally disagree with my take, liking the film quite a bit, and that’s great. Like I said, there is a lot to like here.

HBO’s MINX is a surprisingly fun, funny, and smart series about a feminist and a pornographer who team up in the early 70s to produce a new women’s magazine that combines women’s liberation with photography depicting male full-frontal nudity. I loved this provocative but undemanding show.

Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) is a young journalist trying to get financial backing for her feminist magazine, THE MATRIARCHY AWAKENS. Doug (Jake Johnson) is a low-rent pornographer. She’s uptight, puritanical in her feminism, and brainy; he’s loose in his morality but cunning enough to see a marriage between her ideas and titillating entertainment as the next big thing. Individually, they can’t pull it off, but if they learn from each other, they might just have something big.

The result is a show that’s quite funny, very smartly written, strong in how it tackles the major issues of women’s liberation at that time in American history, and provocative in that Joyce and Doug need each other and mitigate each other’s flaws. This is refreshing, as the issues are handled comically and without one of them always being right or wrong (like many family sitcoms where the dad is basically dumb and the wife smart); in fact, in some cases, they’re both simultaneously right and wrong. Strangely, the show has gotten some criticism for how it treats feminism, but not from men but women. I don’t know the specifics of that criticism, but all I can say is I think the show is fun and makes you think.

Besides the heyday of emerging feminism, the show is also about magazine publishing, which I enjoyed as I used to work on both sides of it as an editor and then a publisher. It’s also about, well, pornography–be warned you will gaze upon tons of penises and boobs in this show. Overall, it’s a fun situation comedy with everybody put in a jam and then yanked out of it neatly within 30 minutes and with plenty of 70s flavor.

So yeah, overall, I had fun with MINX and look forward to season 2, as the show was signed for another season in May 2022.