Netflix’s ‘Mo’ Brings Laughs and Empathy to a Palestinian Experience TV Rarely Acknowledges: TV Review

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 classic, All Quiet On The Western Front was based on the 1928 novel by Erich Maria Remarque and became the first adaptation of a book to win the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as the first Best Picture Oscar winner to also take Best Director. It has hardly been touched by filmmakers since then save for a TV Movie remake by director Delbert Mann in 1979 that starred Richard Thomas. Now that has changed, and in a significant way , as the book has finally been taken on by Germany with director Edward Berger’s (Patrick Melrose, Your Honor) adaptation (co-written with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell) that finally shows us the perspective from the German side. It has already been selected as the German entry for the 95th Academy Awards Best International Film race, and just had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival today.

First a little warning. I had the good fortune to see The Good Nurse knowing absolutely nothing about it except it was a Netflix movie starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne. I had no idea which one was even ‘the good nurse’ of the title, and I was not familiar with the book it is based on, or even the fact it is actually a true story. For all I knew it was like a female version of Freddie Highmore in The Good Doctor. Netflix set up a screening for me at a local screening room. I sat by myself for two hours stunned by what I was seeing slowly take place, a turn of events I did not see coming as I realized I had the same experience in some ways as a viewer as Chastain’s character, Amy Loughren had in real life.

2019 “Knives Out” premiered Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Called “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” the Netflix movie brings back Daniel Craig’s Detective Benoit Blanc and throws him in with an entirely new crew of wealthy eccentrics.Running time: 139 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Season five of Netflix’s Cobra Kai premieres this weekend and the cast stepped out for a red carpet event this week!

Dennis Harvey Film Critic “Nobody messes with my family!” shouts Queen Latifah, aiming a revolver at baddies during a late moment in “End of the Road.” It is one of several points in this Netflix thriller where the blatancy of undiluted cliché has an effect rather more comical than intended. Taking a brisk route from the pedestrian to the preposterous, Millicent Shelton’s slick but silly film diminishes its social-commentary edge by painting an African American family’s cross-country trip in cartoonishly broad terms, imperiled by crazy and/or criminal “crackers” at every junction.  Director and cast do their best — well, maybe not their best, but their competent professional duty — with a formulaic, contrived screenplay. Still, the results do no one much credit, landing closer to overripe cheese than taut suspense, or even guilty-pleasure terrain. “End” launches on the streamer Sept. 9. 

Wendell & Wild.Directed by filmmaker Henry Selick, and written by Selick and Jordan Peele, Wendell & Wild followsscheming demon brothers Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Peele), who enlist the aid of Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross) -- a tough teen with a load of guilt -- to summon them to the Land of the Living. But what Kat demands in return leads to a brilliantly bizarre and comedic adventure like no other.The animated fantasy defies the law of life and death, all told through the handmade artistry of stop motion.Angela Bassett, James Hong, Tamara Smart, Natalie Martinez, Tantoo Cardinal, Gabrielle Dennis, Igal Naor, David Harewood, Maxine Peake, Ramona Young, Sam Zelaya, Seema Virdi, Gary Gatewood and Ving Rhames also star in the film.Wendell & Wild is one of several titles coming to spook Netflix viewers this year, along with Mike Flanagan's new series The Midnight Club, season two of , the previously teased and more. Wendell & Wild premieres Oct.

The Wonder is Gothic without the architecture. Set in rural central Ireland in the wake of the Great Famine of the mid-1800s, director Sebastian Lelio’s adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel methodically moves the chess pieces around in telling the tale of an 11-year-old girl who has locals mystified as to what God is intending by letting her survive for four months without eating. Atmospheric and intriguing up to a point, it nonetheless feels like much ado about a mildly curious situation that’s been milked for rather more than it’s worth.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent It took a pandemic and a lockdown for “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn to make a directorial comeback in Denmark, where he had delivered the “Pusher” trilogy early in his career. “Sometimes the strangest things come in mysterious ways, and this is one of those,” Refn says of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” his Netflix original series, slated to world premiere Sept. 9 at the Venice Film Festival. Since “Drive,” Winding Refn has directed the Bangkok-set thriller “Only God Forgives,” with “Drive” star Ryan Gosling; “The Neon Demon,” with Elle Fanning playing an aspiring model in Los Angeles.; and the Amazon Prime Video series “Too Old to Die Young,” starring Miles Teller as a grieving cop in crime-ridden Southern California. He was preparing another project set abroad when the pandemic hit.

A family affair. The latest dating show from Netflix puts a new twist on finding love — this time including siblings in the mix.

has started to look unsustainable, and it was widely reported in June that the days of blank cheques had come to an end. Do the streamer’s offerings at Venice this year represent that era’s last, loopy hurrah? White Noise, which opened the 78th edition of the festival this evening, certainly has a “last days of Rome” feel about it.

Netflix’s “Lost Ollie” is a good TV series that could have been a great film. In this era of changing expectations in the movie industry where it seems harder and harder to get an original project financed, it feels like more and more creatives are turning to the wide-open landscape of television production, expanding their feature ideas into limited series that don’t always support the format.

Jenna Ortega is sharing her thoughts about the importance of representing the Latin audience in the iconic character of Wednesday Addams, just in time for the highly anticipated premiere of the Netflix series.“Wednesday is technically a Latina character and that has never been represented,” the actress said in a recent behind-the-scenes interview of the show. “So, for me any time I have an opportunity to represent my community I want that to be seen.”Featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia, Luis Guzmán as Gomez, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley.

Selome Hailu SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you haven’t watched Season 1 of “Mo” on Netflix. As I finish interviewing comedian Mo Amer and ask him if there’s anything else he’d like to talk about, he says, “I don’t have a lean addiction, nor have I ever been addicted to lean. I keep saying that every chance I can, because it gets weird out here.” It’s an important distinction to make, as the mixture of prescription cough syrup, soda and candy has killed many, especially in Houston, where Amer grew up. He is the co-creator, executive producer and star of “Mo,” a comedy-drama series that heavily draws from his true experiences as a refugee — his parents were displaced from Palestine to Kuwait where Amer was born, before the whole family fled to Texas during the Gulf War. Several of the show’s most painful moments — like when, 20 years after his father’s death from a heart attack, is looking over paperwork with his immigration lawyer (Lee Eddy) and finds out for the first time that his father was captured and tortured during the war — are lifted directly from Amer’s life. But when Mo begins sipping lean to cope with an injury he sustains in Episode 1 — Amer says that’s all for the plot.

The stakes are high for shows like “Mo,” Netflix’s new comedy series. For decades, TV and film in the West have followed mainstream political narratives, offering Muslims and Arabs of all faiths and none a narrow screen binary: you’re either a villain or a victim.

Summer’s not over yet, but spooky season is just around the corner. In case it wasn’t apparent, Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong’s Netflix series “The Midnight Club” has debuted its sinister first-look images.Based on bestselling author Christopher Pike’s creative works, the 10-episode YA horror series follows the eight members of the Midnight Club, who meet at a hospice with a mysterious history nightly to tell scary stories and look for signs of the supernatural from the beyond.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticIt’s all too easy to understand the appeal of a show like “Echoes” to a streaming service like Netflix. From creator Vanessa Gazy and showrunners Quentin Peeples and Brian Yorkey (“13 Reasons Why”), “Echoes” feels like “Firefly Lane” and “Behind Her Eyes” collided to create a melodrama as deeply strange as it is quickly ingestible. Its seven episodes fly by fast enough to distract from the fact that they only barely make sense.

On paper, a film that is basically a mash-up of “Sliding Doors” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” starring “Riverdale‘s” Lili Reinhart should be a fun, diverting rom-com to wrap up the summer. Unfortunately, the new Netflix film “Look Both Ways” is misguided on almost every level.  Reinhart plays soon-to-be college graduate Natalie whose five-year, post-grad plan includes moving to Los Angeles with her best friend Cara (Aisha Dee, “The Bold Type”) and pursuing work in feature animation.

, Netflix's fictionalized saga about their lives, has finally acknowledged that he's at least familiar with how the show portrays his younger self. Because of course they watch it.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticThe basics of “This Fool” are straightforward and familiar enough. Hulu’s new comedy stars stand-up comedian Chris Estrada as Julio, a 30 year-old who lives with his strict mother (Laura Patalano) and not-so-secretly badass grandmother (Julia Vera).