Weekend Watch: Fair Play, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Loki Season 2
Gender politics, naval law and timey wimey wandering
Image Credit: Netflix
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, a couple is torn apart by a promotion, a Navy crewman is on trial for mutiny and Tom Hiddleston is unstuck in time. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram:@jammerwhite
Chloe Domont’s fascinating sexual and work politics thriller was snapped up by Netflix at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize.
It’s the story of what happens when a coveted promotion at a cutthroat financial firm arises, and once supportive exchanges between lovers Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) begin to sour into something more sinister. As the power dynamics irrevocably shift in their relationship, the couple must face the true price of success and the unnerving limits of ambition.
Soon, destructive gender dynamics are pitting partners against each other in a world that is transforming faster than the rules can keep up.
Domont’s film is an unflinching look at how male jealousy and ambition can rupture what is initially a close relationship, and the subtle power dynamics shift between the central couple. Both Ehrenreich and particularly Dynevor give committed performances, the delicate dance between them becoming ever more intense as the director cranks up the heat.
They have solid support from the likes of Eddie Marsan (playing their no-nonsense finance bro boss) and the pressure builds admirably. Is there perhaps a dive into unnecessary histrionics at the very end? Yes, but the film up to that point is good enough to survive it.
Fair Play is on Netflix now.
Image Credit: Paramount+
The final film directed by the legendary William Friedkin (the filmmaker, let’s not forget, behind The Exorcist, The French Connection and To Live And Die In LA), it’s bittersweet to see The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial go straight to streaming after its festival debut. I am pleased, however, that it’ll be available for audiences at all because this represents an admiral rebound for a director whose best days seemed to be behind him.
And given that it takes place, barring three bookend scenes, entirely within the confines of a courtroom, it does work on smaller screens –– the power here is not in spectacle but in dialogue-driven character fireworks.
Adapted, like 1954’s The Caine Mutiny from Herman Wouk’s play, this is the story of a Naval court-martial. Barney Greenwald (Jason Clarke), a sceptical Naval lawyer, reluctantly agrees to defend Lt. Steve Maryk (Jake Lacy), a First Officer who took control of the USS Caine from its domineering captain, Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland) during a violent sea storm in unfriendly waters. As the trial progresses, Greenwald becomes increasingly concerned and questions if the events aboard the Caine represented a true mutiny or simply the courageous acts of a group of sailors who did not trust their unstable leader.
Friedkin mostly keeps his camera locked down (except where necessary to add tension) and relies on the fantastic performances to drive the movie –– Clarke is all careworn concentration, Lacy the portrait of a nervy officer convinced he was in the right and Sutherland (whose Queeg slowly unravels) a master at using a monologue to convey the different notes of his character.
Credit also to the late, lamented Lance Reddick, all steely authority as Captain Luther Blakely, leading the judging panel, who interjects and handles exposition like a master.
The Caine Mutiny casts a big shadow, but this new version really delivers, the crackling character work overcoming any moments where it feels like a TV movie. If you’re a fan of, say A Few Good Men, this is certainly one to watch, and a fitting final work from a complicated master of cinema.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is on Paramount+ in the US and UK now. It’ll also then appear on Showtime in the States on 8 October.
Image Credit: Disney+
Loki was launched as part of Marvel Studios’ initial salvo of TV series for Disney+, the first batch (along with WandaVision and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier) produced directly by the architects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (as opposed to the Netflix Defenders series).
And it was, alongside WandaVision, one of the best, a clever and creative way to pluck Tom Hiddleston’s god of mischief from the timeline and give him his own story outside of continuity (even if it was saddled with the typical MCU connective tissue towards the end of the first season as it had to introduce a version of Kang, played by Jonathan Majors).
I really enjoyed the first season and I’m happy to report that what I’ve seen of the second is almost as entertaining. There’s a closer focus on Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Loki this time around, and the chaos kicked off by Sylvie’s (Sophia Di Martino) actions at the end of the first run is fully embraced instead of being quickly solved.
She’s back, and while she perhaps doesn’t get as much to do this time (so far), the show does have some excellent new additions, particularly Ke Huy Quan as Ouroboros (“OB”), an enthusiastic technical whizz normally found tinkering in his junky basement workshop, who nevertheless wrote the book on the TVA (he penned the handbook for the organization’s equipment). Quan fits in perfectly to the show, his buoyant energy a constant delight and his ability to spew exposition about temporal meltdowns without you wanting to check your watch a true asset.
Majors is also back, this time as another take on Kang, the 19th century scientist Victor Timely (glimpsed at the end of Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania) and in a separate-the-artist-from-the-art decision (because of Majors’ current legal situation), he does put in another quirky, effective performance.
But it’s still Wilson and Hiddleston’s show, their chemistry once more apparent and the series as a whole still a production design dream of retro styling and whizz-bang effects that don’t detract from the cast.
Marvel really needed a good show after the likes of Secret Invasion, so thankfully here comes Loki to play the hero –– or is it all a trick? –– once again.
Loki Season 2 has launched with its first episode on Disney+. Episodes will appear every Thursday at 6pm Pacific Time. I’ve seen the first four of six.