Chillers, thrillers and some workplace drama

Revenge is a dish best served with humour and … coloured contact lenses? Who can say. These are crazy times. Here are some mostly retaliatory new viewing suggestions for passing the time while awaiting a sign that summer will, one day, arrive for certain.

● Spider-Noir

Series premières with all eight episodes Wednesday on Prime Video

Back in 2007, Nicolas Cage was thrillingly over the top as Johnny Blaze in the supernatural superhero movie Ghost Rider.

Nearly 20 years later, he and his crazy eyes are once again fighting crime and other injustices in the live-action adaptation of the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir.

Available to stream in either “Authentic Black & White” or “True-Hue Full Colour,” Spider-Noir tells the story of a private eye in 1930s New York.

Tragedy and redemption bookend lots of stylish fighting and a bit of humour. Co-stars include Lamorne Morris (Fargo, New Girl) and Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin).

 

● Miss You, Love You

Movie premières Friday, May 29, on Crave

Funerals are tough, all the more so for newly widowed Diane (Allison Janney, The Diplomat).

She is so estranged from her son that she accepts the help of a complete stranger to plan the funeral, her son’s assistant (Andrew Rannells, Girls).

But as Tennessee Williams once wrote, one can always depend on the kindness of strangers. Whether one should or not is another question.

The result here is kinder than in A Streetcar Named Desire and more darkly humorous.

Add tissues to the shopping list.

 

● Not Suitable for Work

Series premières the first three of eight episodes Tuesday, June 2, on Disney+

Does the world need another lightweight coming-of-age workplace comedies?

Uh, yeah, it does.

Will this one, from “from comedy hitmaker Mindy Kaling,” soften hearts hardened by global news headlines and the bulging true crime genre?

Kaling created this series with Charlie Grandy, her partner on the kooky sweet series The Mindy Project, so possibly yes.

Dickinson’s Ella Hunt leads a quintet of work-obsessed beautiful people trying to make their marks in New York City’s Murray Hill neighbourhood.

 

● Cape Fear

Series premières the first two of 10 episodes on Friday, June 5, on Apple TV

Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are returning to the creative well sprung from the suspense novel The Executioners.

Their first attempt, the 1991 film Cape Fear, was not too shabby, starring Robert De Niro as scary bad guy Max Cady, released from prison and seeking revenge.

That was a remake of the 1962 film starring Robert Mitchum at his leering, tattooed best.

In the new TV adaptation, Javier Bardem might be even scarier than his page-boy-coiffed hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men.

The lawyers in Cady’s sights are played by Patrick Wilson and Amy Adams. They know to be very afraid.

Contact lenses and golf claps are employed to torque the suspense, possibly a couple notches too far, but only time and 10 episodes will tell.

 

● Alice and Steve

Series premières all six episodes Monday, June 8, on Disney+/Hulu

Not your average May-December romance, this new “wrong-com” from the U.K. layers on betrayal, unrequited love and Olympic-calibre grudge-holding.

Alice (Annika’s Nicola Walker) has been besties with fellow singleton Steve (Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement) for three decades.

One night realizes a dream come true for one of them and a nightmare for the other but, like, also funny, yeah?

 

winnipegfreepress.com/deniseduguay