Screen grabs: best of the small screen

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This was published 6 years ago

Screen grabs: best of the small screen

By various
Updated

GAMES
CUPHEAD
XBOX ONE, PC


One of the most eagerly anticipated games of the year has landed and two things are immediately apparent: it lives up to its visual promise – a chaotic platformer based on 1930s animation styles with stunning hand-drawn-style cel shading – and it's incredibly tough to get through, at least for casual gamers. You control a little teacup character (Cuphead) who makes his way, Mario-like, through side-scrolling levels collecting coins to pay back a debt to the devil. So far, so easy. But then you realise the game is actually about the 20-plus level bosses and, boy, they are as hard to beat as they are extraordinary to look at (among them a Betty Boop-style skull-firing mermaid, a giant cigarette, and a Hilda, a Zeppelin riding a unicycle). You only carry three lives, and there's no way to boost health or to see how much damage you're doing; a real flashback, then, to the glory days of coin-op arcade gaming. As always, we're grateful to see a two-player co-op mode, but try it at your peril – it only makes things harder. AH

Jamie Foxx as himself and Jay Pharoah as Floyd in White  Famous.

Jamie Foxx as himself and Jay Pharoah as Floyd in White Famous.Credit: Michael Desmond

FREE-TO-AIR
SUNSHINE
OCTOBER 18, SBS, 8.30pm

With an impressive cast of veteran names and first-time actors, this four-part Australian drama is groundbreaking for something that shouldn't be so rare: a portrayal of Melbourne's South Sudanese community. Directed by Daina Reid (Secret River, Offspring) Sunshine follows talented South Sudanese-Australian basketball player Jacob (Wally Elnour), who plays with local team the Sunshine Kings in the inner-west suburb Sunshine. He's hoping to be recruited by scouts for the US College league, but his well-meaning coach, the local priest known as The White Peacock (Kym Gyngell in great form) isn't cutting it. When Jacob discovers grouchy local sports store owner Eddie (an almost unrecognisable Anthony LaPaglia), once played for a US team, he cajoles him into coaching; Eddie has his own reasons for accepting the gig, but you know he's going to reveal his heart of gold. Things are looking up until Jacob and his friends are drawn into a criminal investigation, and wrongly accused of a violent assault on a teenage girl. While there are shades of Christos Tsiolkas' Barracuda, Sunshine is a long overdue portrayal of modern Australia. KN

Jamie Foxx, left, is a producer and guest star in White Famous, which stars Jay Pharaoh as up-and-coming stand-up Floyd Mooney.

Jamie Foxx, left, is a producer and guest star in White Famous, which stars Jay Pharaoh as up-and-coming stand-up Floyd Mooney.Credit: Patrick Ecclesine

DVD
HOUNDS OF LOVE
(SHOCK) MA

Set in the 1980s within a couple of blocks of suburban Perth, this superior exploitation film – inspired by a real case, though first-time writer-director Ben Younger would have you believe otherwise – follows Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), a teenage girl who disappears one night while heading for a party near her home. Her family fears the worst, and rightly: Vicki has been kidnapped by John and Evelyn White (Stephen Curry and Emma Booth) a demented couple who plan to use her sexually then kill her off. Her only hope of escape lies in driving a wedge between her captors, no easy task given how thoroughly the jovial yet menacing John has Evelyn under his thumb. Younger wrings every last drop of suspense from this nightmare scenario, with actors who keep the lurid moments within the bounds of realism, and slick technical support from cinematographer Michael McDermot and production designer Clayton Jauncey. That the worst moments are left to the imagination doesn't entirely negate the film's sadism – but even if it never quite finds a reason to exist beyond shock value, it delivers this with panache. JW

STREAMING
WHITE FAMOUS
STAN

Executive-produced by actor, comedian and Grammy award-winning singer Jamie Foxx, and based on his own experiences as a rising star, White Famous stars Saturday Night Live regular Jay Pharoah as Floyd Mooney, a comedian gaining traction in LA's comedy clubs. Floyd has lots of fans, but as his agent Malcolm (Utkarsh Ambudkar) tells him, he can stay at the level he's at, maintaining his credibility with his mostly African-American fanbase, or he can try to become "white famous". In the pilot, Floyd is mistaken for a parking valet by casually racist film producer Stu Beggs (Stephen Tobolowsky) and is filmed berating him by his mate Ron (Jacob Ming-Trent). The next day Mooney discovers he's gained viral fame after Ron posts the video online – and is promptly offered a feature film role by Beggs in a panicked effort to make amends. When the pair meet the conversation around today's "outrage culture" is spot on, both parties aghast at the other's reactions. The film Beggs is making stars Jamie Foxx (as a heightened version of himself), and Mooney meets with him to decide whether he should take the gig (and help provide for his son), and try for "white fame", or make it on his own. The second episode streams on Stan this week, and every Tuesday after that, streaming the same day as the US. KN

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Christopher Plummer stars as the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes on the trail of the Notorious killer, Jack the Ripper, in Murder By Decree.

Christopher Plummer stars as the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes on the trail of the Notorious killer, Jack the Ripper, in Murder By Decree.

CLASSIC
MURDER BY DECREE
(UMBRELLA) M


Pitting Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper, Bob Clark's 1979 exercise in filmed fanfic is one of the most satisfying of its kind, and much closer in spirit to the original Holmes stories than might be expected from the future director of Porky's. Always good at playing vain characters, Christopher Plummer makes Holmes more of a relaxed jokester than we're used to seeing; James Mason is close to the ideal Watson, blustering and conventional but sensitive underneath. The trick of the film is that it delivers the cosy pleasures expected of a Holmes adventure – fog-shrouded streets, manly banter – while also delving into the freaky speculations that have long surrounded the real-life Ripper: the convoluted plot, involving conspiracies both Masonic and revolutionary, arrives at some of the same conclusions as Alan Moore's subsequent Ripper-themed graphic novel From Hell. As a sometime horror filmmaker, Clark was well-equipped to balance the civilised and the barbaric: his instantly recognisable style is built on controlled bad taste, emerging here in occasional "gross" touches – shots of half-finished meals or mutilated corpses – that recall Alfred Hitchcock's still-controversial Ripper update Frenzy. JW

Wally Elnour stars as Jacob in the new SBS series Sunshine.

Wally Elnour stars as Jacob in the new SBS series Sunshine.Credit: Jackson Finter

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