Quality viewing driven by reverie and revving engines

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/05/2025 (389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s nearly summer, so sure get out there for your daily vitamin D, but make time for this collection of one movie, one doc and three series that offer animated narratives that run from retro and nostalgic to futuristic and frightening. You can take it.

● Nonnas (movie premières Friday, May 9 on Netflix)

Food is love. It’s a fact. Also, if you were lucky enough to have a good one, there’s no replacing your mom or grandmother, except maybe by getting four old-school mammas to cook all their best recipes for the neighbourhood resto that you open as a testament to your dearly departeds’ love, food and ferocious grip on life. This is the pre-Mother’s Day movie that we all need.

Vince Vaughn (Bad Monkey) is Joe, the grieving man who turns to his mother and grandmother’s recipes for solace. Joe Manganiello (True Blood) is his best friend. The title grandmothers employed at Joe’s new restaurant are played by a powerhouse quartet of great Italian American actresses: Lorraine Bracco (The Sopranos), Brenda Vaccaro (Midnight Cowboy), Talia Shire (Rocky) and Susan Sarandon (Thelma and Louise). Finally, Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks) is the girl Joe ghosted at prom who now works at the local Italian market. Too cute. But not, we hope, too too cute?

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● Bad Thoughts (series premières Tuesday, May 13, on Netflix)

If you don’t already know comedian Tom Segura’s work, there are abundant clips on social media and specials on Netflix and Prime Video. He’s one of the best at saying the unsayable, provoking laughs you will wish you’d not laughed. He goes there. And beyond.

For something a little different, this new six-episode series stars him in a series of vignettes that plunge even deeper and more expansively into dark comedy. Among others, he plays a country singer truly devoted to breaking his writer’s block, a hit man who’s off his game, a café customer who will no longer abide and a dad with mixed feelings. Think Dark Mirror where you’re not just shocked, but wishing you could stop laughing.

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● Duster (series premières Thursday, May 15, on Crave)

Yeah, this show is named after the 1970s cool ride. No, this show does not have a talking car like KITT, the co-star of David Hasselhoff’s 1982-86 series, Knight Rider. Here, the car is the, ahem, vehicle for a big ’70s-era revenge thriller. Under the guidance of his former Lost boss J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan (Shameless), Josh Holloway is Jim, the getaway driver of the title car, which is, of course, red.

The story is put into motion when a newbie FBI agent (Rachel Hilson, This Is Us) taps Jim to help her take down crime boss Ezra Saxton (Keith David, Abbott Elementary) and possibly avenge the death of his brother. Let the chase scenes begin!

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● Overcompensating (series premières all eight episodes on Thursday, May 15, on Prime Video)

Benny (played by series creator Benito Skinner) is a closeted high school football star and homecoming king who is trying to be more … Well that’s the question: What does Benny want to be as he arrives at college? He and new pal Carmen (Shrinking writer Wally Baram) try it all and it’s neither pretty nor ugly. More like painful, fun, hilarious, humiliating, two steps forward, eight back into the closet. Like that.

“Guidance” is provided by Benny’s older sister (Mary Beth Barone) and by a virtual Megan Fox. Clueless parents are played by Connie Britton and Kyle MacLachlan. Head-turning cameos are courtesy of SNL’s Bowen Yang, Charlie XCX, SCTV’s Andrea Martin and others.

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● American Experience: Mr. Polaroid (documentary premières Monday, May 19, on PBS, PBS Passport)

The reason you have hundreds (OK, thousands) of photos on the smartphone in your pocket or purse can be credited to (or blamed on) Mr. Polaroid. Before he invented “a camera that you would use as often as your pencil or your eyeglasses,” Edwin Land dropped out of Harvard with a dream to make photography easier than the expensive, chemically dependent craft that it still was. In 1948, the Polaroid Model 95 went on sale and “everything changed in an instant.” By the 1970s, every family had one. By 2004, as a testament to the brand’s staying power, Polaroid felt obliged to issue a statement that, contrary to the lyrics of Outkast’s hit Hey Ya!, people should not actually “shake it like a Polaroid picture.” (The shaking was only useful for the early versions with the protective layer that you had to wait to peel off.) But more than photos, this story focuses on the intersection of technology, daring and imagination that gets stuff done.

 

Broadcast dates subject to change. Questions, comments to denise.duguay@winnipegfreepress.com.