Austen Forever, BritBox
Wallace Shawn and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless.Supplied
In honour of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday (mark Dec. 16 on your calendar), BritBox has embarked on a six-month celebration of films and TV inspired by the English novelist’s oeuvre. Its curated offering to date is heavy on Emma adaptations – including the 1972 six-part BBC television miniseries starring Doran Godwin, the 1996 movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and the 2009 four-part BBC television adaptation starring Romola Garai.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, however, that the very best Emma-related screen property remains Clueless – the now 30-year-old film starring Alicia Silverstone as the Beverley Hills matchmaker Cher Horowitz. This classic American teen comedy written and directed by Amy Heckerling is part of BritBox’s Austen Forever despite being non-British and outside the box. But, in conclusion, may I please remind you that it does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour - The Final Show, Disney+
Taylor Swift perfroms the final concert of her tour in Vancouver on Dec. 8, 2024.Jasmeet Sidhu/The Globe and Mail
Is there anything left to say about the Eras Tour, the highest-grossing series of live concerts in history, which also spawned the highest-grossing concert film of all time? Apparently so. Taylor Swift is giving Disney+ a Swiftie surge with a six-part behind-the-scenes docuseries about her record-smashing tour (complete with under-the-stage smooches with fiancé Travis Kelce) called The End of the Era; it starts streaming Dec. 12, as does a recording of the very last Eras Tour concert, which took place in Vancouver at BC Place on Dec. 8, 2024.
The Globe and Mail’s Marsha Lederman was there – as were Sarah McLachlan, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza – so keep an eye out for her. As Lederman wrote of Swift’s emotional performance, it was “just the usual spectacular pop marathon.”
Little Disasters, Paramount+
Diane Kruger in Little Disasters.Roughcut/Paramount Global/Supplied
Liz (Jo Joyner), Jess (Diane Kruger), Charlotte (Shelley Conn) and Mel (Emily Taaffe) first met attending a birthing group with their partners – and became fast friends. Eleven years on, however, Liz, an emergency-room pediatrician, has to call social services on Jess, a mom who generally avoids modern medicine, after the latter rushes her baby girl into the ER with a skull fracture and no clear explanation for how it was sustained.
Just in time for the holiday season, Paramount+ is bringing this British thriller based on a novel by Sarah Vaughan (which premiered on its United Kingdom and Ireland platforms in the spring) to Canadian viewers. It’s a mom-centred mystery studded with those dishy direct-to-camera testimonials that have offered diminishing returns since Big Little Lies. Little Disasters has many pulpy twists – and Kruger is the rare actor who can make staying hard-to-read for six episodes interesting. But I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief from the moment in the first episode when Liz, a medical professional, describes Jess, who hasn’t vaccinated her kids, as a “perfect mom.” That mythical creature haunts this genre – the real fear being not measuring up as a mother.
Who Almost Killed Melody? CBC Gem
French-language daycare comedy Who almost Killed Melody?CBC GEM
If you, like me, feel the picture-perfect parents – or are they? – type of thriller is a little ripe for parody, well, Télé-Quebec supplied just what the pediatrician prescribed earlier this year with the six-part comedy Qui a poussé Mélodie? Now on CBC Gem with English subtitles as Who Almost Killed Melody?, it’s a mock mystery set at an elite daycare, the inciting incident being a daycare worker pushed down the stairs to the basement by a little hand. (Cut to ominous shot of a puddle of red liquid that turns out to be a dripping juice box.) If the parents don’t find out who the culprit is, all their terrible children will be expelled – and back, horror of horrors, on years-long waitlists for other $10-a-day daycares. Astutely, the series directed with verve by Pascal L’Heureux never shows us the kids in the story – just their terrifying artwork hanging on walls as their parents arrange passive-aggressive playdates to try to solve the preschool crime.
F1, Apple TV+
Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt in F1.Warner Bros.
After a brief run in movie theatres, Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson’s latest whodunit starring Daniel Craig as kooky queer Cajun detective Benoit Blanc, lands on Netflix on Dec. 12. But, this time around, the big twist is that Globe and Mail critic Barry Hertz didn’t like it, calling the follow up to Knives Out and Glass Onion: “Exceptionally overlong, crammed with miscast performers putting in half the effort they should, and so overly pleased with its various (and rather middling) twists that it leaps from ‘clever’ to ‘pompous’ in one fell swoop.” Consider instead toodling over to Apple TV+ where sports drama F1, starring Brad Pitt as a race-car driver making a comeback, parks the same day. Hertz, North America’s foremost expert on contemporary car cinema, made it a Critic’s Pick: “The kind of big and brawny blockbuster that will make even the most cynical cinephile instinctively lean forward a half-dozen times before the one-hour mark, desperately trying to get their eyeballs as close to the screen as possible. “