7 Great Movies & Series to Watch This Week
You can watch these recommended movies and TV series on different platforms such as Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, etc. The listing is a mix of new and older titles worth watching this week.
The Brave New World
If you enjoyed watching Westworld Series, The Brave New World is a good choice to make you think again about human nature in a futuristic environment. Imagine all the anxiety, depression, anger, and other troubling emotions can be disappeared by taking a pill. Then everybody will be happy in society, right? Not sure!
The Brave New World shows the contrast between a modern pharmaceutical controlled society called New World versus an undeveloped natural society called Savage Land. The contrast between these two worlds is so high that members of each society can’t get a common ground to build a relationship together.
This kind of relationship creates a major conflict between loyalty and monogamy in the savage culture and polygamy and emotionless relationship in the New World culture. A romance between a savage and a New World citizen with different values in their minds leads to chaos.
Fargo
I’m sure if someone watched the first season of Fargo could not wait to see the others; but if you missed them, it’s time to catch up. Fargo in seasons 2 and 3 continues to create a grotesque atmosphere with unbelievable coincidences.
Season 2 starts with a funny but tragic killing in a diner. A pure black comedy that shocks the audience.
Rye, son of Gerhardt crime family tries to convince a judge at her dinner table to change his judgment in a case. Instead, the judge sprays him in the eye and he shoots her in response and then kills other people in the place.
When he comes out of the diner, Peggy hits him with her car, and a chain of deadly events kickstarts. This chaotic beginning is just a starter for the main course.
In season 3, even though the environment and characters are closer to what we see in the real world, coincidence is still the primary motivator of the story. An old grudge between two Stussy brothers leads one of them to plan a robbery but things go wrong and lead to murder. The murder embarks a chain of events that unlike season 2 doesn’t create the sense of black comedy.
Instead, we watch a story about a complicated financial trap that involves Emmit Stussy and his company. When he wants to pay back a loan that he borrowed two years ago, the mysterious director of the shady company named V. M. Varga appears and takes over everything. David Thewlis performance is brilliant as Varga; A disgusting smart manipulator with a psychological knowledge of people.
Snowpiercer
If you enjoyed watching the Snowpiercer movie, this series will show you how short was the movie in creating twists and conflicts. So if you hesitated to watch the series because you saw the movie, it’s time to forget that story and get engaged with a brilliant adventurous series.
Snowpiercer is a self-sufficient train that has eternal energy as far as it is traveling around the world. Mr. Wilfred (Sean Bean) is the creator of this isolated world when the whole world is frozen. The temperature outside the train is below 120 C and passengers of Snowpiercer are the only survivors of the never-ending winter.
Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) as the head of Hospitality acts like a governor who gets her orders directly from Mr. Wilfred.
Like any other human society, Snowpiercer is divided by social classes. The first class belongs to rich passengers who paid a lot to get to this section of the train. They are living nothing less than a luxurious life seasoned by parties, shows, best dishes, and whatever anybody can have in 5 stars hotel.
In contrast, Tailers are passengers who couldn’t buy the ticket but could get in the last wagons of the train. They are living like prisoners without fresh food or access to any facility in the first, second and third classes of the train. Head of Hospitality works as the Head of Brutality in punishing any rebellious action. Still, revolution is coming.
Shadow and Bone
Shadow and Bone is unique among TV series on all networks. Choosing a Russian-inspired fantasy world made it more exotic and reinventing the witch as Grisha and creating new rules for the conflicts between good and evil, are all amazing.
It is based on the Grisha novel trilogy, the first of which is Shadow and Bone (2012), and the Six of Crows (2015) novel duology by Leigh Bardugo. Ravka, a fantasy kingdom based on the Tsarist Russian Empire, is set in a war-torn world plagued by the Shadow Fold, a swath of permanent darkness separating East from West Ravka which is inhabited by carnivorous winged creatures known as Volcra.
Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), an orphan mapmaker discovers that she is a Grisha who possesses the power to create light, which could be the key to setting her country free from the Fold. Alina joins an elite army of Grisha serving under General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), the Shadow Summoner.
The fight between good and the devil appears as the battle of light and darkness in Shadow and Bone. There is no known religion in this fantasy world but the concept of battle of light and darkness reminds me of Manichaeism, a major religion founded in the 3rd century AD by the Persian prophet Mani (c. 216–274 AD), in the Sasanian Empire. Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian religious movements and Gnosticism.
Nightflyers
This is a horror science fiction series that looks fresh and new. The situation, the conflicts, and mysteries are not copies of what we saw in previous sci-fi movies or series. The great thing about Nightflyers is that it can hold on to the mysteries and creates even more of them without losing the main storyline.
In 2093, a team of scientists embarks on a journey into space by a ship called the Nightflyer. They want to make the first contact with alien life-forms. However, the terrifying events in the ship, show other things within the Nightflyer can be more dangerous than aliens.
Karl (Eoin Macken) is the leading scientist whose only goal is to understand alien life and communicate with them but Captain Roy (David Ajala) has other priorities related to his late mother who was the captain of Nightflyer. Other crew members are also somehow engaged in their perception of the mission and their past traumas saved as their memory in the ship.
30 Coins
I have never been a fan of The Exorcist (1973) or movies inspired by the blockbuster. Still, 30 Coins didn’t disappoint me as series based on exorcism. It is a Spanish mystery horror series created by Álex de la Iglesia for HBO Europe.
Before watching the series, you need to adjust your expectations about the actors and their style of playing. Like other Spanish production such as Money Heist, most actors are acting in a theatrical style with intense expressions on their faces and eyes. Then you won’t get surprised by the way Elena (Megan Montaner) acts when she is scared of something.
Even though the storyline has some flaws, 30 Coins is still worth watching.
Father Vergara (Eduard Fernández) is an exorcist and ex-convict living in the small town. Some paranormal activities happen in the town and he tries to figure out a mystery seemingly related to a coin he owns. The coin may be one of the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus and handing him over to the Romans. A secretive group of priests who are allied with the devil is trying to gather all 30 coins to empower the devil again.
Brawl in Cell Block 99
If you are a fan of cold-blood stylistic violence, Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a great choice for you. Even the title of the movie looks weird but when you get to know the character of Bradley Thomas (Vince Vaughn) you will accept that everything is weird in this movie.
Bradley gets fired and realizes his wife is cheating on him in the first minutes of the movie. So we know what we are going to see; a lot of unfortunate things are going to happen to Bradley. But unlike the beginning, the rest of the movie has a slow pace that matches the cold character of Bradley. He doesn’t get surprised or angry but when he needs to use violence he acts like a beast.
The storyline is not flawless but the tragic situations created in the movie are horrifying. Still, it’s difficult to justify the level of violence carried out by Bradley.
