Reviews
Album review: Ocean Grove – ODDWORLD
Melbourne party-starters Ocean Grove get weird in both good ways and bad on album number four…
From Medieval witch hunts to deep dives into an artistic icon, here’s what you need to be watching this weekend…
Spring was nice, wasn’t it? All 18 minutes of it, before the world decided to forget it and go back to howling winds and misery. Congratulations to everyone who got overexcited and packed away their big coat. You’ve already got it out again, haven’t you? While the outdoors remains a confusing mess of multidirectional wetness, there’s plenty of entertainment to be had in the pleasant dryness of your house.
Written by Neil and Rob Gibbons – the twin geniuses responsible for much of Alan Partridge’s recent output – this 1645-set sitcom follows the misadventures of a ridiculous, pompous witchfinder (Tim Key) as he escorts a sweary suspected witch (Daisy May Cooper) to her trial. Cheerful anachronisms, loads of shouting, a who’s-who of British comedy royalty popping up in supporting roles and a fine collection of wide-brimmed hats: what’s not to like?
Available now on BBC iPlayer.
Pixar’s latest follows a young girl, Mei, who wakes up one morning transformed into a giant red panda. Part-fairytale, part-puberty metaphor, and soundtracked by some of the cheesiest hits of the mid-’00s for some reason, it’s as cheerful a reminder as ever that hormones are powerful things, and it’s a miracle that anyone makes it out of adolescence unfazed. As with anything Pixar does, expect a beautiful-looking, cheerful time interspersed with full-body weeping.
Available now on Disney+.
The latest in Netflix’s endless well of “ha ha let’s make a thing” shows, Making Fun involves a bunch of talented bearded fellas in a big-ass shed building daft ideas dreamed up by kids. Lead maker Jimmy DeResta is magnificently grumpy, casually dismissing children’s hopes and dreams and freely addressing them as “brats”, like a tool-belted Grinch. There’s a deeply unusual French-Canadian man, a lot of cheerfully rubbish gags and a generally pleasant time had by all.
Available now on Netflix.
Samuel L. Jackson swaps the MCU for a smaller-scale story, delivering an incredible, devastating performance as a man with increasingly severe dementia. It’s something of a passion project for Samuel, who has worked on bringing this story to the screen for years, and presumably fancied a change from eyepatches and multiverses. While the Limitless/Flowers For Algernon elements of the story are enjoyable enough, the main takeaway is that we’ve been so enamoured for decades with how cool he is, we forgot how incredible an actor he is.
Available now on Apple TV+.
Most people know the main bullet points of Andy Warhol: wacky hair, hard-partying lifestyle, the same picture nine times in different colours, a big can of soup. This six-part documentary, executive produced by Ryan Murphy of American Horror Story fame, will expand on it all and then some. Exhaustive and in-depth, drawing from the words of the man himself (which, in typically flamboyant style, he dictated to an assistant on a daily basis rather than writing). It does an incredible job of fleshing out an icon and bringing a bygone era to life.
Available now on Netflix.