A surprisingly early VOD debut for Joker: Folie à Deux leads this week’s streaming releases, backed up by the premiere of Dune: Prophecy, the return of Silo, The Fall Guy hitting Showmax, a new Cruel Intentions TV series, and more!

SERIES

Silo S2

15 November 2024 – Apple TV+

The best sci-fi series you weren’t watching is back! Silo’s first season was a fantastic adaptation of Hugh Howey’s post-apocalyptic book series, perfectly translating to screen the acclaimed first entry in the series Wool thanks to a brilliant turn by lead Rebecca Ferguson. Showrunner Graham Yost (who, coincidentally, I just realized was the screenwriter for Speed, Broken Arrow, Hard Rain, and Mission to Mars) did an incredible job bringing to life a world in which the last remnants of humanity are forced to live underground in a vast vertical silo. When the Sheriff of the Silo dies under mysterious circumstances though, it thrusts a low-level (literally) engineer into an unexpected role where she starts to uncover a vast conspiracy about her very existence. And that’s about all the blurb you’re getting out of me, just in case you haven’t seen Season 1, which you should promptly do and then start on Season 2 as well.

Dune: Prophecy S1

18 November 2024 – Showmax

Undoubtedly the biggest TV series release this week (sorry, Silo), Dune: Prophecy is a prequel series set 10,000 years before the events covered in Denis Villeneuve’s masterpiece Oscar-winning Dune movies. There’s no Paul Atreides yet, no Chani, no Duke Leto, no Lady Jessica, and no Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. But it’s the ancestor of the latter, Valya Harkonnen, and her sister Tula, that takes centre stage here as she builds up the Bene Gesserit order in its very early days, developing the super-human skills and careful genetic manipulations that will eventually make the order a universal power. I was given early access to the first four of six episodes for this season, and it’s definitely very intriguing if lacking in a little oomph for now. Hopefully the season climax can change that.

Interior Chinatown S1

19 November 2024 – Disney+

Charles Yu’s award-winning 2020 novel “Interior Chinatown” was a delightful play on formula as it was published like a screenplay as it followed Willis Wu, a struggling character actor/waiter who is stuck playing background characters like “Generic Asian Man” and “Background Oriental Male” in a fictional police procedural series, while actually dreaming of being the heroic “Kung Fu Guy” on screen. He gets his wish when he accidentally witnesses a crime and gets drawn into the investigation by the police detective in charge. And that’s when things get really weird. Just how much of that weirdness and unique structure makes it into this TV series adaptation of the novel is unclear based on the trailer, but with the great standup comedian/actor Jimmy O. Yang playing Willis and fan-favourite Agents of SHIELD alum Chloe Bennet as Det. Lana Lee, I am definitely on board to check this one out.

A Man on the Inside S1

21 November 2024 – Netflix

As the creator/co-creator of The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place, when Mike Schur’s name pops up on something new, I pay attention. The acclaimed showrunner’s latest comedy TV series effort sees him reteaming with The Good Place’s Ted Danson for A Man on the Inside, in which the veteran funnyman plays Charles, a retired widower professor who has become disillusioned with his mundane life. When he responds to a newspaper ad from a private investigator looking for an assistant to go undercover at a retirement village, it gives Charles a new lease on life as he gets embroiled in a mystery about a stolen family heirloom. Incredibly, this entire setup is based on a true story covered in Oscar-nominated Chilean documentary The Mole Agent.

Cruel Intentions S1

21 November 2024 – Prime Video

Hey, if you saw the trailer above and recognized the name, and then immediately got grumpy and started mumbling under your breath “remakes” and how “nothing is sacred anymore”, then congratulations! You’re old! Released in 1999 and starring then-hot stars Sarah Michelle Gelle, Ryan Phillippe, and Selma Blair, Cruel Intentions was a contemporary adaptation of the 1782 French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which had already been adapted to screen in 1988 period piece Dangerous Liaisons. These are only the most famous on-screen version of this tale as it was adapted in an additional thirteen times in movies and TV. So, it comes as absolutely no surprise at all that we’re getting another version now, this one being a modern-day American series, that more closely resembles that iconic 1999 version. Set in a US college populated by wealthy young socialites, it follows two step siblings, Lucien and Caroline, who make a provocative bet that Lucien cannot seduce the new girl on campus, who happens to be the daughter of the Vice President of America.

MOVIES

Tarot

15 November 2024 – Netflix

I’ll be honest that I know very little about recent supernatural horror movie Tarot other than it was a mild box office success, earning $49 million on a $8 million budget, despite negative reviews from critics. If you’ve been wondering about the movie, you can now get the chance to check it out for yourself as the film is already debuting on Netflix just a few months after its theatrical release. According to the official synopsis, “when a group of friends recklessly violate the sacred rule of Tarot readings, they unknowingly unleash an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards. One by one, they come face to face with fate and end up in a race against death.”

The Fall Guy

18 November 2024 – Showmax

Speaking of movies where the box office and critical reception didn’t align… As I noted in my 8/10 review, The Fall Guy was a blast of fun with killer chemistry between leads Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, while also being a showcase of action stunt work by stuntman-turned-acclaimed-action-director David Leitch. Unfortunately, despite earning $181 million worldwide, its budget meant that it still ended up losing Universal Pictures around $50 million. Ouch. If you’re one of the people that skipped this movie in cinemas earlier this year, you now get to rectify that as The Fall Guy debuts on Showmax next week. The action-comedy-romance (it has something for everybody) follows Gosling’s Colt Seavers, “a battle-scarred former stuntman who is drafted back into service when the star of a mega-budget studio movie – being directed by his ex, Jody Moreno (Blunt), goes missing.” Besides for the big laughs and thrills, also be on the lookout for Yungblud’s absolutely killer cover of KISS’s “I Was Made for Loving You” throughout the movie.

The End We Start From

21 November 2024 – Showmax

Jodie Comer shot to fame playing unhinged assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve, but since then she’s taken on a number of more dramatically serious roles… and knocked them all out of the park! And her latest effort is no different. Adapted from Megan Hunter’s bestseller of the same name, The End We Start From is a star-studded British drama that also stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Katherine Waterston, Mark Strong and more. The film is set in the aftermath of a series of catastrophic floods hitting London, forcing a young mother on a dangerous journey as she searches for safety for her and her baby from the surrounding chaos.

VOD RENTALS/PURCHASES

The following movies have recently become available for digital purchase/rental:

Joker: Folie à Deux

Purchase: Apple TV – R200

Rental: Apple TV – R170

Well, this is a surprise! Or actually not, if you’ve been following the discourse for Joker: Folie à Deux which not only earned scathing reviews from both audiences and critics alike but also tanked at the box office. Personally, I wasn’t too enamored with 2019’s Joker, which saw director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix give the titular Batman villain a very non-comic book adaptation. My opinion was seemingly an outlier, as Joker went on to earn $1 billion worldwide and netted Phoenix a Best Actor Oscar. As a result, there were a lot of big expectations for the film’s sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, which would feature Lady Gaga bringing to life fan-favourite character Harley Quinn. But it seems Phillips’ ambitious idea to make this a “jukebox musical”, on top of now also being a courtroom drama, and trying to comment on the first film’s fanbase (in particular the rather toxic portion of it) was just too much for everybody. Current projections have the film being written off as a $200 million loss for Warner Bros! Yeesh! And thus, while it’s still playing in cinemas just six weeks after release, we now find the sequel being offered up for digital rental/purchase.

The American Society of Magical Negroes

Purchase: Apple TV – R170

Rental: Apple TV – R45

And speaking of movies that tanked at the box office… Despite having an intriguing concept, the critical consensus on The American Society of Magical Negroes was rather middling and mixed. Commercial reception was a resounding failure though as the film earned just a measly $2.5 million from its limited theatrical run before premiering on the Peacock streaming service. So, what happened? Well, unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that calling the movie “The American Society of Magical Negroes” probably didn’t help. It shouldn’t have made a difference, but this is sadly the world we live in. For what it’s worth, the film from writer/director Kobi Libii is a satire of the “magical negro” trope and follows a young biracial man (Justice Smith) who joins a clandestine group of magical African Americans committed to enhancing the lives of white people.