Binge-r #224: WandaVision + Lupin

Bewitched: Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff) and Paul Bettany (Vision) in WandaVision

WANDAVISION

Streaming Service: Disney+

Availability: All nine episodes now streaming

This year Disney+ is making the most of Marvel Studios, bringing characters from its superhero subsidiary into the streaming realm. There’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in March, with Loki following in May, but first up is WandaVision, a portmanteau title and concept that expands the connection between two supporting characters from The Avengers blockbusters while trying to zig-zag around comic-book convention. Jac Schaeffer’s show is an experiment, but having watched the three episodes provided to critics before the launch later today, I’m not sure what results they’re actually pursuing. Would I like to see more? Yes. Does it need to do more? Yes.

Wikipedia or my Marvel-centric teenage son can give you the full background on them, but in brief Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) can control magic and alter reality, while Vision (Paul Bettany) is an artificial intelligence who took human-like form; in the margins of The Avengers franchise they fell in love. They are both supremely powerful, which is probably why they’re first seen as characters in a B+W sitcom – I Love Lucy with witchcraft, or Bewitched with a quantum computer husband. Their characters are passing for suburbanites, and they get into predicaments – Vision’s boss is coming to dinner but Wanda thinks it’s their anniversary night – which riff on their unique position. “I’m a regular carbon-based employee,” Vision insists to a co-worker, as square as the frame on the screen.

The dual-meaning gags are droll, and if you can remember the original shows – the third episode shifts into colour and The Brady Bunch’s home layout – the fidelity is amusing, but Olsen and Bettany playing superheroes playing broad sitcom performers does start to drag by the second episode’s town talent show. Throughout there are intimations of trouble, and neighbours such as Agnes (Kathryn Hahn, eternally the best) know more than they’re letting on, growing worried as unnatural events accelerate. You can think of this as The Truman Show where the marks can save the planet, and the hooks are well laid. Nonetheless, WandaVision has to change the channel at some point, and that’s when we’ll know what we truly have. For now, I’m cautiously optimistic.

To Catch a Thief: Omar Sy (Assane Diop) in Lupin

LUPIN (Netflix, five episodes now streaming): It’s rare nowadays for a crime thriller to be both suspenseful and charming, but this enjoyable French series – five episodes up, five to follow – mostly pulls it off. At the centre of that balancing act is Omar Sy, the French actor who starred in the 2011 box-office phenomenon The Untouchables. First seen casing the Louvre, he plays Assane Diop, a thief who operates on his own code and is motivated by the arrest of his dedicated immigrant father 25 years prior. Assan’s first heist is underway in minutes, but the deeper explanation, along with the scheme’s twists, are held back. Assane’s many identities and nefarious skills are inspired by the character of Arsene Lupin, a beloved paperback character created by Maurice Leblanc and first published in 1905. The books are an example to a young Assane (Mamadou Haidara), and the plot moves neatly between eras, linking the past to now and capturing the racial divide that Assane both exposes and uses to his advantage: “they can’t have people seeing us,” Assane says of the ruling class, but it’s impossible to miss the charismatic Sy.

NEWLY ADDED MOVIES

New on Netflix: With an on the money cast led by Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow, Pet Sematary (2019, 101 minutes) is an exceptional Stephen King adaptation that finds horror in a family’s desperate love; Juliet, Naked (2018, 97 minutes) is an enjoyably knowing comedy about male obsession told from a female perspective, with Rose Byrne as the bored woman who bonds with her boyfriend’s favourite singer, played by Ethan Hawke.

New on SBS on Demand: Jacque Audiard’s A Prophet (2009, 150 minutes) is one of the great crime dramas of this century, with Tahar Rahim as the son of Algerian immigrants who gets caught up with a Corsican gang led by Niels Arestrup’s gangster in a French prison and slowly moves from survival to control in the uncompromising environment.

New on Stan: Amy Schumer got sidelined by Hollywood clichés, but her initial collaboration with director Judd Apatow, Trainwreck (2015, 125 minutes), remains a caustically enjoyable re-do of the romantic-comedy; Sam Shepard stars in Robert Altman’s adaptation of his 1983 play, Fool for Love (1985, 108 minutes), a Mojave Desert motel face-off between former lovers that’s uncertain about the staging but allows Kim Basinger to shine.

>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to catch up on Bryan Cranston’s Stan thriller Your Honor and Netflix’s monster-laden horror series Sweet Home.

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