Netflix

The Top Gun series received generous support from the US Navy because it was such an effective recruitment tool. I wonder if something similar went on between the CIA and Netflix’s new series The Recruit, this time as an exercise in reputation management. 'There’s nothing sinister or threatening about the Company,' this bizarre, horribly ill-judged and tasteless comedy/thriller series squeals at every turn. 'We’re just a bunch of lovable, kooky misfits doing our bit to defend your freedoms.' If you think I’m exaggerating, consider that one of the biggest baddies in the series – right up there with the evil Russians – is the Senate oversight committee responsible for holding the CIA to account. R-i-g-h-t.

Sorry for the delay: Cockburn has been busy bleaching his eyes after watching the trailer for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s newest venture, a Netflix documentary on "their story." https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1598287753774477312 People magazine claimed, “It's Meghan Markle and Prince Harry like you've never seen them before,” which makes Cockburn question if the publication has had its eyes and ears shut for the last two years. The documentary series, which is composed of six episodes and will premiere in December, includes personal footage of the pair at their wedding reception, on a trip to Africa and while Meghan is pregnant. But what’s a Meghan and Harry venture without the doom? The trailer also includes footage of Meghan wiping away tears. Perfect timing!

Screen adaptations of Agatha Christie mysteries never go out of style. The problem is that they're so often concerned with literal fidelity that they get bogged down in self-seriousness, so desperate to “update” everything that they veer into the ludicrous. With 2019's Knives Out, Rian Johnson successfully updated the Christie-style whodunit because he had a deep knowledge of its formula and he played it with a pitch-perfect, kooky sensibility. For Knives Out’s sequel, the newly released Glass Onion, Johnson does what you should do when Netflix gives you buckets of money to make a whodunit. There are expensive locales and production design, a bevy of great character actors and a twistier murder plot.

Blockbuster is a single-cam sitcom about the last Blockbuster (located inside a strip mall in Michigan). The set is dressed in authentic signage, fluorescent lights, blue walls and an oddly prophetic Howard the Duck poster. The employees have real Blockbuster name tags and uniforms (the producer, John Fox, acquired the rights and handed it over to established showrunner Vanessa Ramos: I have the rights to Blockbuster. Would you like to develop a workplace?). Every episode is packed with movie references and checkout-counter humor. The transitions between scenes are scored to hip-hop beats that sound like something you’d hear on Nickelodeon in the Nineties. You’re inside a Blockbuster for the first time since Carol Danvers fell through its roof in Captain Marvel.

The most interesting part of the new Netflix Marilyn Monroe pic Blonde, for me, is the representation of a very specific kind of Hollywood rot. We do not at first appreciate very much about the two men with whom a young Marilyn Monroe, played by Ana de Armas, begins a romantic affair. We know they are two faces in a Hollywood acting class. We know they are bookends of a sort — blandly handsome, interchangeable, good casting on the part of writer/director Andrew Dominik, who in other ways delivers a project that, in the words of a friend, “looks like a very expensive student film.

You’d have to pay me an awful lot more than I get for this column to review Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. As I write, it’s the number one trending show on Netflix, but the most I’m prepared to stomach is that snatch of footage you get forced to watch (because of Netflix’s impertinent and intrusive automatic play function) if you linger over the title image for too long. It shows two cops at an interview desk gradually revealing to Dahmer’s increasingly aghast dad (Richard Jenkins) that his son Jeffrey might not be quite the straight upstanding citizen he imagined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

“I always tell the truth — even when I lie,” says Tony Montana in Brian DePalma’s 1983 cult classic gangster film Scarface, which on September 1 became available for streaming on Netflix. The line resonates well in a post-truth world. In the film’s climactic scene, Tony, the drug kingpin played by Al Pacino, has just started his slide to rock bottom. His wife, Elvira, played by a young and then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer, has publicly dumped him in an embarrassing scene at a high-end restaurant as well-manicured bourgeois types look on aghast. His erstwhile business partner in the drug trade is closing in after Tony failed to dispose of a troublesome investigative journalist.

If occasionally enjoying a sappy romcom is wrong, I don't want to be right. That's why I was thrilled when my boyfriend agreed to watch Netflix's Purple Hearts with me last week. (In exchange, I avoided side-eyeing how many bourbons he had throughout the ordeal.) The premise of the movie, without giving too much away, is that Cassie wants to wed a Marine so that she can take advantage of spousal healthcare benefits. Cassie was recently diagnosed with diabetes, you see, and cannot afford her insulin. Meanwhile Luke, the enigmatic Marine, has his own reasons for agreeing to a fake marriage. Like most films in the genre, Purple Hearts requires you to suspend disbelief quite a bit.

The author Neil Gaiman is one of the comparatively few writers who really understands how to use social media. Not only does he have nearly 3 million followers under the handle @neilhimself, his bio self-deprecatingly insists he will "eventually grow up and get a proper job," though "until then, he will keep making things up and writing them down." Gaiman is a prolific tweeter, interacting with his millions of admirers in a joyful and unpretentious way. I once had an edifying conversation with him around the time that my biography of Lord Rochester, Blazing Star, was published. Gaiman is a fully paid-up Rochester aficionado, and was gracious and generous with his time and appreciation.

Although it’s not exactly my cinematic bag, I understand why people were looking forward to Batgirl. It is a superhero film (as so many are these days), but with a potentially interesting female lead, namely Barbara Gordon, aka "Batgirl," the daughter of Commissioner Gordon, Batman’s ally. The film attracted a starry cast, including J.K. Simmons as Gordon, Brendan Fraser as the sociopathic antagonist Ted Carson, aka "Firefly," and Michael Keaton gamely reprising his Batman role. It cost $90 million, was directed by the filmmakers responsible for the surprisingly entertaining Bad Boys For Life, and might have been expected to be a modest box office hit: at the very least, it should have provided a couple hours of undemanding entertainment.