Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson in Down Cemetery Road, premiering on Apple TV+ on Oct. 29.Matt Towers/Apple+/Supplied
Down Cemetery Road, Apple TV+
Emma Thompson has landed a plum role in Zoë Boehm, a philandering and potty-mouthed private detective who looks a little like Pepé Le Pew in a leather jacket. It takes an episode of this new six-episode British mystery based on a novel by Mick Herron (Slow Horses) before Thompson’s louche sleuth takes centre stage, however.
First, viewers meet Sarah (Ruth Wilson), an art conservationist whose eye for detail gets her into trouble after an explosion takes places at an alternative-living community near her home in Oxford. Inquiring after a child she saw taken from the wreckage, she’s soon knee-deep in a conspiracy.
Creator Morwenna Banks is an alumna of the Slow Horses writers’ room, and while Down Cemetery Road can be more cartoonish than that Apple TV+ hit (especially with its baddies), Wilson’s off-kilter performance and Thompson’s attempts to top Gary Oldman should be enough to please a crossover audience. Two episodes out now; new ones on Wednesday.
Veille sur moi (Watch Over Me), CBC Gem
Veille sur moi, or Watch Over Me, is a six-part Radio-Canada family miniseries written by Pascale Renaud-Hébert.Danny Taillon/CBC Gem/Supplied
Pascale Renaud-Hébert wrote this six-part Radio-Canada family miniseries (now available with English subtitles on Gem) about a lower-class family – and won a Prix Gémaux in Quebec for her uncompromising performance in it.
The actress-screenwriter plays Corinne, a young mother who tries to reconnect with her child, Zack, three years after abandoning him with her own mother, Maggie (Guylaine Tremblay), to go on a bender with a boyfriend. Corrine says she’s given up the drugs, has left her abusive partner and is ready to be a parent, but Maggie, who has been through her own struggles with sobriety and domestic abuse, is skeptical.
The subsequent messy battle over Zack between these two deeply flawed and frustrating women intersects with the police, Quebec’s director of youth protection and the family courts. The specificity of the setting, the gritty acting and strong emotions help the series rise above certain movie-of-the-week elements. More subtitled CBC/Radio-Canada content streaming in both directions, s’il vous plaît.
Challengers, Crave
Mike Faist, Zendaya and Josh O'Connor in a scene from Challengers.Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures/The Associated Press
Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (a.k.a. Nine Inch Nails) have had a bad month. Both After the Hunt, Guadagnino’s new film, and Tron: Ares, which Reznor and Ross soundtracked, flopped at the box office and were excoriated by critics.
Luckily, we’ll always have Challengers, their 2024 collaboration, which lands on Crave on Oct. 31. The movie follows flailing tennis all-star Art (Mike Faist) and his wife and coach, Tashi (Zendaya), who signs him up for a minor tournament to rebuild his confidence. This leads the pair to cross paths with their old friend Patrick (Josh O’Connor) – with whom they share a very intimate past, gradually revealed in flashbacks.
The Globe and Mail’s Barry Hertz praised both Guadagnino’s direction and the “heart-pounding score” by Reznor and Ross in his Critic’s Pick review: “This is a startlingly entertaining, erotically charged movie that hits its many targets with a kind of ferocious and crazed accuracy that’ll knock the wind, among other things, right out of you.”
The Substance, Mubi, Paramount+
Coralie Fargeat’s body horror The Substance is a perfect way to cap off Halloween.Christine Tamalet/MUBI
If you’re looking for something to cap off scary season, Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 body horror – which found many fans beyond those who typically follow that genre – may be just the ticket.
Now on Paramount+ in Canada in addition to Mubi, the film stars Demi Moore as an Oscar-winning actress whose career hits a wall when she turns 50. In desperation, she tries out a secret serum that promises a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. Be careful what you wish for – and enter Margaret Qualley.
The Globe and Mail’s Sarah-Tai Black made The Substance a Critic’s Pick, writing: “While the film begins as a visually sumptuous but all-too-literal satire of the brutal reality of aging as a woman in a male-led industry, The Substance amps itself up into a frenetic and delightfully silly genre exercise that outdoes itself at each new turn, complete with practical effects and prosthetics work that completely transforms its lead characters.”
Hedda, Prime Video
Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss and Imogen Poots in director Nia DaCosta's Hedda.Parisa Taghizadeh/Prime/Supplied
In-between her contributions to superhero cinema (The Marvels) and zombie flicks (the coming 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple), director Nia DaCosta decided to turn her lens toward Henrik Ibsen – and came up with an unusually lively film adaptation of his 1891 play, Hedda Gabler.
Tessa Thompson plays a vibrant version of the title character, married to a dull academic and downwardly mobile but living as if she isn’t. Full of mischievous and mysterious ennui, Hedda likes to swing around her late general father’s guns and ruin the lives of others.
DaCosta’s film takes some interesting stabs at considering what it means to have a mixed-race Hedda (such as explaining the character’s unmentioned mother), but gets most of its energy from queering the love triangle between Hedda and the brilliant but troubled academic Lovborg (the just plain brilliant Nina Hoss, once a Hedda herself at the Deutches Theater in Berlin) and Thea (Imogen Poots), a woman who helped get Lovborg get back on the straight and narrow.
The setting of a Downton Abbey-style estate in the 1950s seem to be mainly for aesthetics, rather than sense, but never mind: This Hedda zings and smoulders in a way few stage productions of the play do.