Tag: thrillers

Stream It Or Skip It?

The Spanish thriller Wrong Side Of The Tracks proved to be a hit on Netflix last year because it not only had the “old guy as neighborhood vigilante” angle on lock, but it had an excellent ensemble cast that made the show’s intertwined storylines interesting to watch. Everyone is back for a second season, and the storylines seem to be bigger and even more ambitious than the were in the first season.

Opening Shot: A man who is sleeping in his apartment hears construction work outside and is grumpy that it wakes him up early.

The Gist: Tirso Abantos (Jose Coronado) retired from the hardware store he owned in the Madrid neighborhood of Entrevías — he gave it over to his son Santi (Miguel Ángel Jiménez) — but he’s still as angry as ever, especially with the increase in drug activity in the neighborhood. He also misses his granddaughter Irene (Nona Sobo), who moved back in with her mother Jimena (Maria Molins) after Tirso helped save her from the gangs that were after her.

It’s Irene’s 18th birthday, and she still misses her boyfriend Nelson (Felipe Londoño), who, after killing Sandro (Franky Martin), is now co-leading his old gang with Nata (María de Nati). As she’s getting ready to leave the house, she ends up passing out. When she comes to, Jimena is setting up what’s supposed to be a surprise birthday party for her. But all Irene wants to do is give her some personal news. Jimena is sidetracked by her real estate developer boss, who comes to the party to tell her he wants her to lead a project where he wants to invest in Entrevías.

Nelson gets into it with a rival gang who is trying to take over the corner by the bar owned by Tirso’s friend Pepe (Manuel Tallafé). When he manages to escape, bloodied but mostly just pissed off, Nata tells him that they need to battle to push the Latino gang off the corner. She brings her guys over to the bar to get into a brawl with the rival gang, but Tirso interrupts it by shooting his gun in the air.

Tirso is starting to feel that he alone is the only one who can keep the drug activity off the corner, especially when he learns Pepe wants to sell the bar. After breaking up the fight, he decides to sit on the corner in a lawn chair. At one point he almost gets into a shootout with Nata, who is passing with Nelson in a car. Nelson, of course, doesn’t want to get involved with Tirso, not just because of Irene but because Tirso is his neighbor and good friends with his mother Gladys (Laura Ramos). Later, Nata tells him that this is his life now, which prompts him to threaten Tirso with a gun.

Speaking of Gladys, she picks up Ezequiel Fandiño (Luis Zahera), the disgraced police detective who went to prison for his involvement in Sandro’s gang. He and Tirso face off for her attention, but he also makes a big show that he’s around the neighborhood again and working against his old boss, Inspector Amanda Armatose (Itziar Atienza). But we see that he was sprung early for a reason, and ingratiating himself with Nata is a big part of it.

Photo: Netflix

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? When we reviewed Season 1 of Wrong Side Of The Tracks we compared it to Gran Torino, basically because they’re both about two angry old guys who want to clean up their neighborhoods. The comparison stands this season.

Our Take: While Season 1 of Wrong Side Of The Tracks (Original title: Entrevías) certainly had a purpose to its many-layered story, Season 2 feels like it’s a bit more freeform in plot. he players are established, but the stakes are now higher. In a lot of ways, it feels like in Season 2, creator David Bermejo and his writing staff are throwing all of the elements of the first season into the pot and stirring it to see what comes out.

That doesn’t mean that the story doesn’t move as well as it did in Season 1, with the same extended-length episodes. In fact, it moves better because we know where everyone in the ensemble stands and what their motivations are.

But the somewhat tight story that Bermejo put together in Season 1 has expanded in scope. Now Tirso is going to take on any and all gangs in the neighborhood, instead of just making sure Irene is safe. Nata and Nelson are looking to take over the neighborhood with a big supply provided by a mysterious trafficker named “Ghost.” Ezequiel is trying to buy his freedom by infiltrating Nata’s gang. And Irene, who appreciates what her grandfather Tirso did for her by having her live under his strict rules, will be involved with Nelson in a way that will likely alienate both her mother and Tirso.

In a lot of ways, it feels like a second season of this show was never Bermejo’s intention, but it was such a hit on Netflix that he and his writers had to scramble a bit to create reasonable plotlines for a second season. Even so, it’s still fun to watch Coronado continue to be an ornery old son of a bitch, Ezequiel use his knowledge of the neighborhood to serve his own interests, and Irene try to figure out just who she’s going to grow up to be.

Sex and Skin: Nelson and Nata have sex near the end of the first episode, right as Irene leaves him a voice message telling him her big news.

Parting Shot: Irene says in her message that she’s pregnant, and the baby is Nathan’s. We see Nathan’s phone light up with the message in the pocket of his jeans, draped over a chair as he has sex with Nata in the background.

Sleeper Star: María de Nati plays Nata as a complete and total badass; by the end of the first episode, Nata is well established as this season’s “big bad.”

Most Pilot-y Line: When Tirso tells Pepe and Sanchís (Manolo Caro) that the three of them can patrol the corner, Pepe replies, “What are you talking about, Tirso? The three of us slapping people around as if we’re The A-Team?” Gotta love the reference, but The A-Team did more than slap people around; they shot at people but never hit them and drove around in a cool-ass van.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the more sprawling second season storylines, Wrong Side Of The Tracks is still a pulpy ensemble thriller that has a slight undercurrent of camp beneath all of the gang activity and violence, which is an appealing combination.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.



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Stream It Or Skip It?

Time jumps, at least the back-and-forth kind, are all the rage for prestige dramas these days. Sometimes the gambit works, sometimes it doesn’t. From what we’ve seen, the more care that’s taken with how each time period is presented goes a long way to helping make such a story cohesive and coherent. A new French thriller actively goes back and forth in time, using a device that definitely sets the two time periods apart.

Opening Shot: As foreboding music pays on a phonograph, the camera pans up from a bowl of cereal, some of which has spilled on the table. A little boy stares at a blue butterfly in a frame as the butterfly turns black.

The Gist: Author Adrien Winckler (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is at a creative impasse with the follow-up to his well-received first novel. So he drives out to the isolated house of Albert Desiderio (Niels Arestrup), a man in his seventies who has asked Adrien to write his memoir. As Adrien sits down with Albert, the older man wants to concentrate on his relationship with the love of his life, Solange (Alyzée Costes) who died a few decades ago.

He starts the story when they met, when both were around 12; he defended her against bullies who called her a “kraut whore,” and he saw the tough life she had, with a mother who took in “gentlemen callers” (i.e. customers) while Solange would wander around unsupervised. But that’s also when they fell in love.

Fast forward to when the two of them were around 20. Albert (Axel Granberger) and Solange are together but haven’t consummated their relationship yet. On the beach, the two of them encounter brothers who seem to be friendly, until one of the brother forces himself on Solange while Albert is in the water. She defends herself with a corkscrew, and Albert turns on the man’s brother to eliminate any witnesses. Albert has kept this incident secret for sixty years, and feels that Adrien is the one who should bring the story to light.

Adrien is dealing with his own past as he and his girlfriend Nora (Alice Belaïdi) try to have a child; he travels to Belgium to see visit the offices of the company his late father Wim started. His cousin invites him to the family mansion for dinner, but Adrien gets stopped at the door by his uncle — his dad’s brother — who considers Adrien and his mother personas non grata as far as the family is concerned. Nora finds Adrien’s manuscript based on his interviews with Albert, and starts talking it up to people.

Meanwhile, a police detective named Carrell (Sami Bouajila), who we see has a bold streak when he deals with a shotgun-wielding assailant, reexamines a cold murder case with a suspect who looks a lot like Solange.

Photo: Netflix

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We’ve seen the back-and-forth time jump method Black Butterflies in shows ranging from This Is Us to Yellowjackets, but the tone of this series is more the latter than the former.

Our Take: Black Butterflies (Original title: Les papillons noirs) sets up an interesting dual storyline, with Adrien dealing with his own life turmoil while hearing about Albert and Solange, whom we feel weren’t done killing people on that beach back in the early sixties. Creators Olivier Abbou and Bruno Merle move the first episode along well, introducing the three sides of this story with just enough information to make the viewer intrigued about what comes next.

The person who gets the short end of the story stick is Carrell, but we get enough about him to know that he’s a gritty and determined detective, wiling to stare down a shotgun and almost get a face full of buckshot to disarm someone. But once he looks at that cold case file, involving the death of an American back in 1970, we know that the show is going to be about more than an old man telling an author the tale about the murder spree perpetrated by him and the love of his life.

We’re curious to know how Adrien’s troubled family life will connect into how he looks into what Albert is telling him, and how deep he’ll get into his subject’s life. Also, it feels like his relationship with Nora, which seems so solid in the first episode, won’t stay solid because of either his investigation or the fact that Nora seems to be happy reading the private files on his computer. But through the construction of Albert’s memoir, Abbou and Merle have provided an effective way to bounce back and forth in time in a way that alleviates any confusion and is pretty clear about where we are in a particular story.

Sex and Skin: Adrien and Nora get naked during a baby-making session, but the more provocative nudity comes when young Albert and Solange make love for the first time after they kill those brothers on the beach.

Parting Shot: Adrien trashes his novel manuscript and puts his pen name “Mody” on the manuscript of the Albert and Solange story. We then see older Albert staring out his window.

Sleeper Star: Alice Belaïdi is Nora, who seems to be a stabilizing force in Adrien’s life, but we’re not sure if that will stay that way.

Most Pilot-y Line: “My mother said you were a family of assholes. All except Wim. I just wanted to see for myself,” Adrien says to his uncle when the uncle threatens to call the police on him.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The format of Black Butterflies adds to both of its main storylines, even if they don’t look like they’ll come together during the first episode. When they do come together, we hope that the result is as entertaining as the first episode was.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.



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Where Was Netflix’s ‘Lou’ Filmed?

Allison Janney has officially entered her Liam Neeson era with Lou on Netflix, a new action thriller that began streaming on Friday.

Directed by Anna Foerster, with a screenplay by Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley, Lou stars Janney as the titular character, an ex-CIA agent living a quiet, remote life. Or at least, she was, until her neighbor, Hannah’s (Jurnee Smollett) daughter is kidnapped by her unstable father, and the two women team up to him track down. A huge storm prevents them from calling the police or going for help, but, thankfully, Lou has a particular set of skills acquired over a long career that will help her rescue this little girl on her own.

Most of the film takes place outside in the rain and wilderness. Janney and Smollet stomp through dirt and mud, climbing under rocks and over trees, all while soaking wet. In a recent interview with Decider, Janney spoke about getting into the headspace for such a physically intense shoot, saying, ” I met with the director Anna Foerster, and we really talked cold turkey about what this was going to entail. Anna said, ‘It’s going to be dark and dirty and wet. It’s not going to be easy. Are you willing to go to these places?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely. I’m terrified, but I want to and I know I’m up for the challenge.’”

But where were those places, exactly? Read on to learn more about the Lou filming locations.

WHERE WAS LOU FILMED?

Lou was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, and in the surrounding British Columbia area. The production was filmed in June and July 2021, and, according to a recent interview with Allison Janney for Screen Rant, it was in the middle of a heatwave in the area. Luckily, because so much of the movie takes place during a rain storm, the actors were kept cool—by being drenched.

“I also appreciated that there was a huge heat wave going on in Vancouver, where we shot this, so being wet felt kind of great,” Janney said. “There were times when we were freezing, but most of the time during the day, it was like, ‘Thank God. Turn the water on.’ It was really nice.”

Based on photos Janney posted on her Instagram, it wasn’t exactly a glamorous set, but it certainly was interesting.

For the big finale sequence along the coast, as well as for the downtown scenes at the hardware store, Lou filmed on the Ucluelet Pennisula, per a report from Victoria News. According to the report, Ucluelet’s Pioneer Boatworks was converted into a hardware store, while The Crow’s Nest, Ucluelet’s longest-running store, was turned into a bank.

There you have it! If you ever find yourself in the Vancouver or Ucluelet area, be sure to pay your respects to the Lou filming locations.



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Stream It Or Skip It?

You ever watch a scene or scenes on a show and rewind to try to figure out just what happened and/or what was said? You tend to do it for one of two reasons: Either the moment was so shocking that you have to take it all in again or the moment was so confusing, you need to decipher exactly what went on. We rewound the last scene of the first episode of Echoes and watched it three times. Sad to say, it wasn’t because we were enthralled with it.

ECHOES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman running through an upscale neighborhood.

The Gist: Gina McCleary (Michelle Monaghan), an author in LA, is very close to her identical twin sister Leni (also Monaghan), who is a horse farmer in Virginia. She calls her sister all the time for advice, and they leave each other messages in an online journal. But she’s getting worried that her usually-responsive sister isn’t returning her calls.

She eventually gets a phone call from Leni’s husband Jack Beck (Matt Bomer) that Leni has gone missing. Without a second thought, Gina flies to her hometown to see where she can help. It’s more than just wanting to help, though; the two of them are so connected that she wouldn’t know what to do if Leni was no longer around.

Gina is as pushy as Leni is relaxed, so when a day’s search ends for the night, she leans heavily on Sheriff Louise Floss (Karen Robinson) to keep looking. The folksy sheriff, who was a deputy when Gina left town under extreme circumstances, knows what she’s been through and relates the story to deputy Paula Martinez (Rosanny Zayas).

Gina goes to the house where she grew up, where her father Victor (Michael O’Neill) lives with her younger sister Claudia (Ali Stoker), who completely resents Gina for leaving. Gina notes that Jack has hired a nanny, Natasha (Maddie Nichols), and moved her niece Mattie (Gable Swanlund) to a different room. In addition, body parts from old creepy dolls her late mother gave her and Leni are missing.

As she goes looking for Leni in some of their old haunts from when they were kids, including a local cave, we find out that Gina is actually Leni; the two regularly switch lives. It seems that the real Gina has run off for good, as a note tells Leni that she can choose either of their lives going forward.

Photo: JACKSON LEE DAVIS/NETFLIX

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Echoes plays like an extremely dumb version of Orphan Black.

Our Take: There were lots of reasons why the first episode of Echoes, created and written by Vanessa Gazy, grated on us. The first was the wooden acting by lots of people who have been excellent in other projects. Monaghan is especially melodramatic as we hear her lyrically write to her sister in this online journal that makes no sense to us. Do only the two of them see it? Or is this public? Don’t they call and text each other all the time? Why communicate in this clunky way?

But she’s not the only one whose performance is stunningly bad. Bomer has an accent that goes in and out, and the usually reliable O’Neill seems to have only slightly modified his usual cantankerous federal agent persona into a cantankerous rancher character. And Robinson’s folksy Sheriff Floss might be a bit too folksy for the tone of this series. It doesn’t help that all of these fine actors are saddled with lines that are either just plain bad or delves in too much exposition. For instance, Gina’s husband Charlie (Daniel Sunjata) says that Jack “feels like he brings your LA drama to his quiet Virginia life,” which just told us where the two sisters live. Oof.

All of this would be fine if the very idea the show is built on made any sense. Why on God’s green earth would these women switch lives so often, which means they spent however much time they’re the other sister’s life lying to their family and friends? And when it’s revealed at the end of the first episode that Gina is really Leni, we’re left scratching our heads; we still weren’t clear which sister Monaghan was currently playing and which left. Her voice over at the end that said, “OK, Gina, welcome back to being Leni, to being me… so I can find out just what you did here… to both of us,” we had to listen to that line 3 times to even come close to figuring out who was who and what Leni is looking to do.

Sex and Skin: None, at least in the first episode.

Parting Shot: See above; Leni comes back to her house as herself, braids in place and self-inflicted bruise on her head. She hugs Jack and Mattie, but her drawl-inflected voice over has her thinking about just what the hell kind of chaos Gina inflicted when she was being Leni for the past year.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Robinson as Sheriff Floss; yes, she may be too folksy at times, but she’s taking the goofiness of the role and running with it.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Charlie, a therapist, asks Gina over the phone if she’s seeing things through a lens of anxiety, Gina replies, “No I’m seeing things through a lens of shit is fucked up.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Echoes is without question one of the most messy and confusing shows we’ve seen in awhile, and there really seems to be nothing for a viewer to grab onto that would tempt them to move to the second episode after the first is over.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.



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