In cinemas

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: 11 November

In the hype surrounding the sequel to Marvel’s sensationally celebrated Black Panther, the elephant in the room has been how to deal with Chadwick Boseman’s death. By accounts thus far, the answer is: very well indeed. The film is a tribute to the late actor, which runs emotional parallels between his death and that of the hero he played, King T’Challa. Wakanda must find unity in the wake of their leader’s passing to protect their nation from intervening world powers — a hidden undersea Atlantis-like nation. The film is even more routed in its already established female characters than the first one was, and reportedly intimate and moving despite the scope of its enormous world.

The Menu: 18 November

A darkly comedic satire of foodie culture and the grotesqueries of fine dining. A young couple, Margot and Tyler (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult), travel to a remote island as part of an exclusive culinary experience curated by an eccentric and increasingly suspicious celebrity chef (Ralph Fiennes). The wealthy guests are soon force-fed their just desserts, and realize that their gastronomic adventure is more like a Saw sequel than an episode of Chef’s Table.

***

Netflix

Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste: 5 November

Netflix is sticking to its guns pumping out insidious true-crime documentaries, this time investigating the sexual wellness company that emerged in Silicon Valley in 2001 and gained immediate popularity and notoriety for it’s advocacy of a practice it dubbed “orgasmic meditation”. The inevitably cultish pyramid scheme structure of the company is the least of its alleged crimes. Apart from the controversies depicted in the film, a group of former members of OneTaste called The Real People Of OneTaste have claimed that the 15 years’ worth of never-before-seen footage and interviews pertaining to the company was unlawfully acquired by Netflix from a former employee who stole it from private hard drives.

Is That Black Enough for You?!?: 11 November

Writer and film historian Elvis Mitchell, tracks the history of Black cinema and representation from its earliest days to the present and centring in the 70s, a crucial period in the emergence of influential African American film. Mitchell incorporates and contextualises clips from over a hundred key films with interview input from a staggering cast of artistic voices, including Charles Burnett, Samuel L Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, Laurence Fishburne, Harry Belafonte and Zendaya. Casual racism in film, a terrifyingly inseparable feature of this tapestry, is addressed concisely, powerfully, and with appropriate anger; contributing to an overwhelming sense of the importance and benefits of representation in the arts.

Stutz: 14 November:

A witty, vulnerable, and ultimately instructive film about Phil Stutz, one of the world’s leading psychiatrists. Over his 40-year career he’s helped countless patients including high-profile creatives and business leaders, and among them many therapy skeptics. The film is directed by one of them — Stutz’s friend and patient, Jonah Hill, who points out how strange it is for a patient to make a film about his therapist, but explains his motivation thus: “my life has gotten immeasurably better as a result of working with you. If it worked for me, maybe it will work for other people.” Hill and Stutz sit down for a candid, unorthodox session that summarises Stutz’s signature visualisation exercises, The Tools, for the viewer. 

Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?: 17 November

An irreverent documentary series about a college student who called Pepsi’s bluff and sued them for a fighter jet. Named after the cult-film Dude, Where’s My Car?, it’s the kind of wacky niche story that could only have gone down in the mid-90s (and made with the music and culture to match). Even with its celeb-soaked ad campaigns, Pepsi was losing the cola wars to Coke, so in a bid to capture a bigger slice of the market, they rolled out their biggest-ever campaign: “Pepsi Stuff”. The campaign explained that when you buy Pepsi, you’d accumulate “Pepsi Points”, which you could spend on stuff, like sunglasses or a leather jacket … it featured a commercial which remains their most infamous (despite Kendal Jenner’s best efforts) which implied that if you bought enough Pepsi, you could use your points to purchase a Harrier jet. The ad was supposed to be a joke, but John Leonard saw it as a challenge. 

1899: 17 November

From the creators of Netflix’s German surprise sci-fi success Dark, 1899 is yet another epic character-driven series which focuses on the human side of a high-concept science fiction theme; in Dark it was time travel, in 1899 it’s … something else. A migrant steamship filled with passengers from various parts of Europe heads west to leave the old continent in search of new beginnings in America, but their voyage is completely disrupted when they happen upon another migrant ship adrift in the open sea. What they find on board opens up a thrilling and horrifying mystery.

Trevor Noah: I Wish You Would: 22 November

With SA’s most famous comedian having recently announced his imminent retirement as the host of The Daily Show, he’s jumping right back into standup with his third Netflix special. As well as returning to an art form and lifestyle he’s most comfortable in, Noah has cited a desire to distance himself from serious topics like the war in Ukraine and the daily stuff-ups of American party politics as reasons for his leaving the show. Instead, in his special, he speaks about lighting things, like learning German and his love of curry.

Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich: 25 November

A sequel to Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, this time telling the story of his partner, who allegedly enabled Epstein’s sex trafficking of over 500 young girls, procuring them for him and his circle of sickos. The series delves into her background and how her class and privilege concealed her predatory nature, but Epstein and his ilk are still out of reach, unnamed and unpunished.

***

Amazon Prime Video

The English: 11 November

An epic chase Western series set in 1890 about an aristocratic Englishwoman (Emily Blunt) who crosses the brutal, strikingly sparse American West with a Pawnee ex-cavalry scout (Chaske Spencer) in search of revenge on the man she blames for the death of her son. As the pair’s journey becomes more treacherous, the nature of their intertwined pasts becomes clearer, weaved into a parable of race, power, and love. Even with his realism and sleek cinematography, director Hugo Blick seems keenly aware of the Spaghetti Western tropes that linger in the desert sands. 

Good Night Oppy: 23 November

In 2008, Disney’s Wall-E proved that with playful storytelling (and the right story) even a motorised vehicle can make a lovable protagonist. Director Ryan White has taken it up a notch — this story actually happened. The hero of this documentary is Oppy (Opportunity) a billion-dollar rover that was sent to Mars for a 90-day mission in 2003 but managed to survive for 15 years. With VFX by Industrial Light & Magic, the film reimagines Oppy’s quest to find water on the red planet, and documents the contribution she made to science (near-proof that life once existed in the now-wasteland) and the strangely touching relationship between a machine and her human operators millions of miles away. 

***

Showmax

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber S1: 1 November

Each season of Showtime’s new anthology series Super Pumped covers a true story that disrupted the business world and transformed global culture. Where better to start than the stratospheric impact of the upstart transportation company, Uber. The series is centred around Uber’s bull-headed CEO, Travis Kalanick, played by the unfailing Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as well as his calculated mentor, Bill Gurley, (Kyle Chandler) a Texan venture capitalist who bet everything on the company’s success. Kalanick was ultimately usurped in a boardroom coup — the high-speed drag race to that point will have you wondering how any of this could really have happened.

A Shot Through the Wall: 17 November

A Chinese-American police officer in Brooklyn accidentally shoots and kills an innocent black man. Director and writer Aimee Long boldly opens several steaming cans of politically charged worms at once: racism in the police force, racial profiling, the media’s role in justice, and the psychological drivers and impact of police brutality. What sets the film apart from agenda-driven melodramas is that it embraces moral grey areas that are more typically smoothed into black and white to simplify political messaging. The film has been criticised for not giving more screen time to the family of the victim, but the issues it does address offer a nuanced impression of controversial hot topics.

***

Apple TV+

Causeway: 4 November

The feature directorial film debut of acclaimed theatre director Lila Neugebauer is a glitzy indie film that rides on the presence of Jennifer Lawrence as its tumultuous lead — Lindsay, a US soldier sent home from Afghanistan after a traumatic brain injury left her mentally and physically disorientated and depressed. Her tedious readjustment to civilian life sees her connecting with an unlikely friend (Brian Tyree Henry). DM/ ML

You can contact Keep An Eye Out via [email protected]