TheRetroCritic

I talk a bit about Netflix's new show Ozark .

Clint Eastwood directs this grim, Oscar-winning thriller from 2003 about an investigation following the death of a young girl in a Boston neighbourhood. It stars Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon as three friends who each have a connection to the case in some way. The film is essentially a murder mystery with Bacon and Laurence Fishburne as the detectives and everyone else as the suspects. We're first introduced to the main characters as children and learn that one of them was abducted and abused by two strangers for four days in a dark basement once, which makes for not exactly the most uplifting start to the proceedings but which becomes an important plot point later. We then catch up with the grown up kids years later: Dave (Robbins), who was abused, is now married and has a child, Jimmy (Penn) is an ex-thief with a family and dodgy connections and Sean (Bacon) is a cop. When Jimmy's daughter is found killed one morning, everyone's world is turned upside down a

The Squid And The Whale was Noah Baumbach's first big hit as director and put him on the map as one of the new indie filmmakers to look out for. The film, which was co-produced by Wes Anderson, was a short-and-sweet look at a dysfunctional family in the 80's. This was obviously a personal story for Baumbach to tell and he puts the awkwardness of having your parents go through a divorce and having to grow-up during that time across extremely well. These characters are, in part, cruel and selfish and, in part, likeable and naive so you can't help but identify with them a little bit, even when they're at their worst. As the pretentious loser father Bernard, Jeff Daniels is spot-on: the character's sheer inability to not think about himself for one second, the fact everything he says to his kids is wholly inappropriate, that he doesn't even treat his son's new girlfriend to lunch and his questionable relationship with Anna Paquin's student makes him pr