Ever since
The Invisible Man, the upper-class wife whose luxury real estate becomes an overbearing metaphor for her isolating marriage seems to have become a go-to set-up for indie filmmakers. Last year we had
Swallow and
The Nest, and this year that plot gets a straight-up genre treatment in
Held. The perennially pained-looking Emma (Jill Awbrey, who also wrote the script) is clearly over her square-jawed husband Henry (Bart Johnson), but they’re giving it one more try by escaping to a secluded, automated smart house vacation rental. Naturally, the property’s version of Alexa has other plans drugging them and forcing them into chivalrous machinations straight out of a 1950s marriage manual. Held doesn’t hold back, skimping on character development, rushing into the concept and mainly using the first act to set things up to pay off later. Basic druggy montages, a visually uninteresting set and an even more uninspired baddie sap
What’s new on VOD and streaming this weekend: April 9-11
Including Nomadland, Sugar Daddy, The Nevers, Held and Exterminate All The Brutes By Kevin Ritchie and Norman Wilner
Apr 9, 2021
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OW critics pick what’s new to streaming and VOD for the weekend of April 9. Plus: Everything new to VOD and streaming platforms.
Sugar Daddy
(Wendy Morgan)
NOW named Kelly McCormack one of Canada’s rising screen stars in 2019. Watch Sugar Daddy and you’ll see why: Morgan’s slightly stylized, emotionally charged drama stars the Letterkenny and Killjoys scene-stealer – most recently seen as an unwelcome guest in Ginny & Georgia – as a struggling musician who joins an agency that provides “paid dinner companions” to older men who don’t want emotional attachments, or anything further. Naturally, the reality of it turns out to be a little more complicated. McCormack wrote and produced the film, and does her own singing, but Sugar Daddy’s not just a showcase for her
Laura Donnelly and Ann Skelly are the heroes of the new HBO series The Nevers.
THE NEVERS (Joss Whedon, Philippa Goslett). Premieres Sunday (April 11) at 9 pm on Crave, with new episodes airing weekly. Rating:
NNN
The Nevers was to be Joss Whedon’s first television series since Dollhouse, and technically it still is: while the writer/director/producer departed the show last November, claiming exhaustion, principal photography for the first season had already been shot. Post-production was completed by Philippa Goslett, who replaced Whedon as showrunner in January… shortly before cast members of Whedon’s previous projects came forward with accusations of abusive behaviour dating back to Buffy The Vampire Slayer.