Not sure what to watch next? Subscribe to The Daily Beast’s Obsessed See Skip newsletter here and get the latest show and movie recommendations every Tuesday.
There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.
We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.
See: May December
May December is a feature-length tête-à-tête that forces viewers to read between the lines and engage with the movie’s tricky themes, dense characters, and our public fascination with mythmaking in a way no other film has done this year. It’s brilliant.
Here’s Esther Zuckerman’s take:
“A melodramatic score blares. A camera pulls in on a soft focus image of Julianne Moore staring inside a fridge. It seems like we're getting ready for a big revelation, something out of the soap opera playbook. Instead she says, with immense gravity: “I don't think we have enough hot dogs.” This is Todd Haynes’ May December, the latest movie to rock the Cannes Film Festival.
Saturday was a busy night on the Croisette. Not only did it mark the premiere of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, it also saw the introduction of Haynes' latest, a wonderfully tawdry, upsetting, and often hilarious film, that leans into its tabloid inspirations through an art house lens and features a breakout role for Charles Melton of Riverdale fame. It would seem like these two movies couldn't be more different, but I felt a theme running through my Cannes viewing that night: The lies people tell themselves to justify their own atrocious actions. Haynes just tackles this with a dose of a camp and two of our great actresses acting their faces off.”
See: Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is a film that only Queen Bey could make: an awe-inspiring concert documentary that offers a unique glimpse behind the metallic curtain of a benchmark tour, celebrating—and dissecting—the world’s most unpredictable pop star.
Here’s Kyndall Cunningham’s take:
“This past January marked ten years since Beyoncé made her film directorial debut with the HBO documentary Life Is But A Dream ahead of her surprise self-titled album. One of the most personal projects in her oeuvre, the film found the pop star in a state of metamorphosis following the end of her professional split from her father and former manager Michael Knowles and the birth of her first child, Blue Ivy Carter.
Not only did she revolutionize the “digital drop” and raise the bar for pop music videos within that year; she began to adopt a life of extreme privacy, transitioning from a visible A-list celebrity to a more mysterious, almost deity-like figure. Every soundbite, red-carpet appearance, and film project since has felt like some sort of miracle, a gift from God herself to her die-hard fans.”
Thaddeus J. Mixson, Genneya Walton, Madison Thomas, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Eddie Murphy in Candy Cane Lane.
Claudette Barius/AmazonSkip: Candy Cane Lane
Candy Cane Lane is a holiday comedy chock-full of plotlines but thin on humor and the warm, merry mirth that we want from this kind of fare. However, points for a Christmas movie with an allegory about the impossibility of happiness under capitalism, I guess.
Here’s Fletcher Peters’ take:
“If there’s just one person who should be on the Naughty List this year, let it be Eddie Murphy, who is about to release Candy Cane Lane, one of the worst Christmas movies of all time. Even Deck the Halls, which has a similar premise and boasts a 6 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, doesn’t come close to the atrocities of Murphy’s convoluted mess.
Candy Cane Lane, releasing Dec. 1 on Prime Video, begins with a promising plot: Chris Carver (Murphy) is laid off from his job mere days before Christmas. With three kids, one of whom has her eyes set on going to college at the pricey Notre Dame University, Chris and his ambitious wife Carol (Tracee Ellis Ross) scramble over how they’ll buy presents and survive into the new year with a lack of funds. An angel is sent from heaven in the form of a neighborhood Christmas lights competition, which promises to bestow $100,000 on the house with the finest exterior holiday decor.”
Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway in Eileen.
NEONSee: Eileen
Eileen is a return to the midcentury-style noir thrillers of Hitchcock and Wilder, a character study that’s as precarious as the snow and smoke that fill its frames. A perfect original score and Anne Hathaway’s best performance in years make it a must-see.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“Eileen’s first image is through a car windshield as the vehicle’s interior fills with smoke. Consider that haze a multifaceted metaphor—for pent-up desire, lethal suffocation, and liberating concealment—as well as a potential case of the Chekhov gun principle.
That said, a real firearm also plays a part in William Oldroyd’s adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s book of the same name, which premiered Friday at the Sundance Film Festival. The film interweaves elements from his prior Lady Macbeth, Todd Haynes’ Carol, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho and various 1940s noirs and 1950s melodramas into something sultry, sinister, and wholly surprising.”
Sign up for our See Skip newsletter here to find out which new shows and movies are worth watching, and which aren’t.
