Movies and TV: Ebeneezer, The Good Daughter, How to Rob a Bank

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman, on Newstalk, with Ciara.

Ciara Kelly (0:08)

And now it is time for what to watch on the big screen and small, and we are joined this week in studio by John Fardy, presenter of Screentime and Entertainment Journalist, Sarina Bellissimo. Guys, you're both very welcome to The Hard Shoulder. John, we'll come to you first of all. What is your first pick?

John Fardy (0:22)

Yeah, so I'm mostly on the small screen this week. It was just the week I was having. So there's a big Sky Atlantic Sky Show. Or is it HB Max? No, it's Sky, isn't it? It is Sky. You want to get the people who are providing it right. It's Sky Atlantic and it's just Sky are complicated now. They have so many kind of different iterations. You can watch on Sky Premier. It's called The Good Daughter. It's getting a lot of column inches. We have Rose Byrne and Megan Fahey playing two daughters in kind of Appalachian America who are both lawyers. And it's no spoiler to say it begins with, in essence, a school shooting, a pretty horrific one, where a small number of people are injured and indeed died. And also something horrific happening in their childhood where they witness something awful and their lives may be in danger. And they are both drawn back into this Appalachian town. Their dad is played by Brendan Gleeson playing this kind of like Atticus Finch lawyer type character. So they're a family of lawyers. The locals don't like them because they have no time for, you know, keeping things quiet in a community and stuff like that. This is... I thought I was going to love this.

There's been some great dramas like this in Roseburn. There's a terrific actress, Brendan Gleeson goes without saying. It's only OK.

It's not bad.

Ciara Kelly (1:43)

What's it lacking?

John Fardy (1:44)

There's too many characters in it. There's too many narrative threads.

And the episodes are slightly too long, I felt, for what was happening. Like, we talked a while ago about a brilliant show on Apple TV called Last Scene, where it's only five episodes long and not a moment is wasted. I felt there was a few moments wasted in this. And I even asked my wife, and she was kind of... who watches most of this stuff with me, and she was of the same opinion. And it's based on a book by Karen Slaughter, who is, in case you've never heard of her, is the most wildly successful pot-boiler thriller writer who my wife reads all the time and loves. And she was saying, yeah, it's only okay. No, it's not bad. It passes the time. And I'm not finished it, and I'm really curious to see. Well, curious, not really curious. It's okay. It's like two and a half to three stars out of five for The Good Daughter.

Ciara Kelly (2:35)

It passes the time is never what anyone would write under the bottom of their sort of film or TV.

Sarina Bellissimo (2:41)

It passes the time, John Fardy. You know what I mean?

Ciara Kelly (2:44)

Newstalk.

John Fardy (2:44)

Now you're talking. Yeah, no, you're right. It doesn't, so I don't like kicking things. It's not that it's worthy of kicking. It's just, I thought it was going to be better. It had all the components of this is going to be great. I couldn't wait to start it. And about four in, I was going, this isn't really working the way I thought it would. The performances are all fine. There's just not enough in it. And there's not enough tension.

There's too many moments where there aren't tension.

Shane Colman (3:07)

All right. Okay, yes, Sarina Bellissimo, what's your first choice?

Sarina Bellissimo (3:11)

I'm going to go with Ebeneezer. So this is the start. We all know this story. This is based on Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but this time, there's the retelling and starring as Ebeneezer Scrooge is Johnny Depp. So we all know the story. He's a miserable businessman. He's visited on Christmas Eve by three ghosts, past, present, and future, and it's a story of redemption. It can almost be said that this is Johnny Depp's redemption film. I don't know. I was going in this a bit. Do we need to say this again? I really liked it. Really?

I think, look, everyone has done this from TV shows to movies.

Ciara Kelly (3:50)

The Muppets did it really well.

John Fardy (3:52)

They did. Bill Murray did it terrifically as well.

Sarina Bellissimo (3:54)

He did. Yes. He was scrooged.

There's so many retellings. What I will say about this, and you know I'm a wuss, and I find it really hard to sit through horror so much so, that I had a friend watching this afterwards text me going, were you okay? Because the ghost scenes are really dark and can be quite frightening. So this isn't a Christmas carol. I bring kids to see this. Yeah. I wouldn't bring under 12s probably to see this, and it is rated PG-13 anyway because it does get dark and scary in places. But having said that, it's so good.