In the British Netflix miniseries ADOLESCENCE, a 13-year-old boy is arrested for murder. In four separate but linked stories, we see how the arrest impacted everyone around him and piece together what happened and why. It is a brutal, arresting watch for pure human drama, and it blew me away.

The story begins with police bursting into a home to arrest Jamie Miller on suspicion of savagely murdering his classmate Katie Leonard. Thus begins ADOLESCENCE in a breathless first episode that will have your blood boiling and shatter your nerves if you’re a parent. It looks like Jamie did it, but did he?

In the next three episodes, we see the police investigation at Jamie’s school, a psychologist questioning the boy at a detention center, and see how his family is coping and struggling for hope, answers, and peace.

Each episode is a single take, normally a technically ambitious but in these episodes a tremendous feat as we travel through a large, perfectly conceived realistic setting. Stephen Graham, who co-wrote and starred as Jamie’s dad, is no stranger to this type of filmmaking after doing BOILING POINT. That was set in a restaurant, though, and in ADOLESCENCE we follow the characters through an entire police station, high school, and town. You really feel like you’re there, and stretches of little mundane things happening take on the gravity of a dramatic pause rather than produce boredom. From timing to everything happening in the background, it’s all meticulously planned, though it doesn’t look it but instead feels completely natural.

The actors are just incredible, every single one absolutely nails it, with the great Stephen Graham leading the pack. The actor who plays Jamie, in particular, was a real standout.

The themes are as grueling as the drama. The horrible role of social media in teen’s lives, the bullying, incel subculture, never-ending hierarchy of popularity haves and have-nots, and how you think you’re doing parenting right but you never know the one thing that might have a negative influence on how your child sees the world. At the heart of this is boys and girls, young boys thinking girls have all the power, lacking positive mentor role models, and thinking you have to be aggressive to stand up for yourself. Beautifully done, none of the themes are explicit, instead offering the entire story as food for thought and discussion.

Overall, ADOLESCENCE is a powerful, heart-shredding, thought-providing, and very human drama. Highly recommended.

In HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2022), a 19th century applejack salesman’s orchard is destroyed when a beaver gnaws through one of the beams supporting a giant keg, which rolls into his house and blows up. Jean wakes up in winter and finds himself in a struggle to catch food, then decides to become a fur trapper, and finally sets out to trap enough furs he can win the hand of the lovely daughter of the local supplies trader.

This movie is wacked in the best ways, sort of a live-action, multimedia TOM AND JERRY cartoon where the wildlife consists of people in animal costumes and the conflict between Jean and the animals plays as nonstop slapstick comedy. There’s a simple gaming element in Jean acquiring enough fish and pelts to trade to slowly build up his capabilities with items like weapons. The last act overplays its hand a bit, but overall, it’s great fun, with plenty of goofy laugh-out-loud moments.

I enjoyed this one a lot for its borrowing what worked about old childhood cartoons and using them to carve out its own goofy identity with a simple story that is fun and never, ever takes itself seriously.

In JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX, everyone’s favorite archvillain returns in a film I didn’t hate as much as some but could not appreciate.

I enjoyed the first film in 2019, though I’m not sure “enjoyed” is the right word, as I found it a good film but unpleasant and sometimes feeling a bit like work. I certainly admired its ambition, tone, and grit, how it took a comic book villain and threw him into the real world with a startling and surprising origin story. But I found it pretty cynical overall. Unlike in the excellent DARK KNIGHT, where the Joker was crazy but had a strong guiding philosophy that directly contrasted with Batman’s, in JOKER, the Joker is, well, just mentally ill, beaten down by the world so much he becomes a grandstanding narcissist who murders people he resents. The riot at the end of the movie teased that there might be more to it, as a lot of angry people in Gotham connect with his lashing out, suggesting the start of a movement celebrating chaos and the birth of a true supervillain. I thought, okay, that was the origin story, now we get the story of an archvillain.

Instead, we got, well, this.

First off, again I didn’t hate the movie, as I curbed my expectations before going into it. But after watching, I have to agree the film seemed to go out of its way to antagonize the first movie’s fans by not only subverting but curb stomping pretty much any hopeful expectation they might have had. Instead of a rampaging supervillain, we get a neutralized and neutered Joker, a tedious courtroom drama, and a musical (which I didn’t mind at first but thought should have been used as an accent instead of such a huge part of the runtime). Lady Gaga plays an intriguing Harley Quinn, and she acts as a catalyst for him to rediscover his inner Joker, only for there to be really almost no payoff for either character. Otherwise, the story pretty much stands for most of the movie, revisiting the events in the first film for most of its run and not really offering much that is new or interesting.

I caught a review on YouTube where I thought the reviewer really nailed how to fix it–tell the story from Harley’s point of view. She has a philosophy for the Joker’s chaos and uses Arthur Fleck to become the next Joker. Done this way, there would have been a real dynamic and engaging story instead of watching one where the story appears to retread its original material, leading some reviewers to wonder if the filmmakers were trolling their own work’s fans.

Anyway, if you liked the first movie, my guess is you probably won’t like the sequel. I don’t regret watching it, but I did find it a real failed opportunity.