Monsters: the Menendez true-crime saga doesn’t know when to stop
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
★★½
Netflix
Of the many monsters, both individual and systemic, featured in this messy true crime exploration, none is more voracious than the show itself. Sprawling in length – a crucial failing – and ravenous for contrasting perspectives, the second season of Ryan Murphy’s biographical crime anthology doesn’t know when to stop. If you want to credit this to ambition, then there are rewards, including a compelling episode told in a single 30-minute shot, but if you lean towards lurid excess, Monsters certainly incriminates itself.
Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch as Lyle and Erik Menendez: Acting like spoilt brats.Credit: Miles Crist/Netflix
The case was a sensation. On August 20, 1989, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, aged 21 and 18 respectively, walked into the television room of their family’s Beverly Hills mansion armed with shotguns and shot dead their parents, Jose and Kitty. It was the precursor to the O.J. Simpson saga, with the siblings’ first trial in 1993 broadcast live in America. Once arrested, Lyle and Erik’s defence was that they feared for their lives, having been previously subjected to many years of sexual and physical abuse by their father.
In some ways, Monsters applies a contemporary perspective to the past. The brothers claimed they were overwhelmed by their collective trauma, a 21st-century concept that was dismissed by many in the 1990s, including a trial judge. But the show never bears down on this, preferring to gorge on tone and technique. Initially, Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) act like spoilt brats, while Jose (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloe Sevigny) are nightmarish tyrants. There’s black farce and homoerotic flourishes – sometimes it’s as if the Coen brothers adapted Bret Easton Ellis.
2022’s Monster, with Evan Peters as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, veered towards exploitation, but it was bolstered by a telling theme: the official disdain that allowed Dahmer to target black and gay men without scrutiny. Too much of what Monsters adds to its central narrative feels unnecessary, whether it’s the introduction of celebrated Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane), who campaigned against the brothers, or an episode dedicated to Jose and Kitty’s abuse-laden backstories.
Nightmarish tyrants: Chloë Sevigny and Javier Bardem as Kitty and Jose Menendez.Credit: Miles Crist/Netflix
After the fifth episode, which has the half-hour take from director Michael Uppendahl painstakingly zooming in on Erik as he tries to explain his complex feelings for his abusive father to his lawyer, Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor), the narrative’s momentum starts to wane. Nine episodes could have been six. The four lead performances have a vivid charge, albeit pulpy and narrow in the case of Bardem and Sevigny, but Monsters doesn’t have a defining purpose. It’s a season of unspeakable horrors that has little to say.
How to Die Alone
★★★½
Disney+
The shorthand for this American dramedy might be The Mindy Project meets Six Feet Under: snappy lines and absurd flourishes, with an undertow of existential fear. Creator and star Natasha Rothwell (The White Lotus) plays Mel Jackson, a New York airport worker whose vivacious demeanour comes crashing down in the first episode, leaving her in hospital deeply shaken and with no one answering when she calls for a ride home.
Natasha Rothwell in How to Die Alone: Snappy lines and absurd flourishes.Credit: Disney+
Mel’s a people pleaser who hates her own life, but changing it requires hard conversations and painful decisions. Rothwell salts these moments through a blue-collar workplace comedy that has an edgy energy. Harsh moments rear up out of the banter, while the humour can be whimsical with an ever-present mordant edge. “We are black people living in America,” Mel replies when told smoking is bad for her health. “Our odds are not great to begin with.”
The comedy and drama seep into each other, both in feel and structure. There might be a sitcom-like lesson, but it’s not something that Mel can simply implement and flourish with. Repurposing your life is painfully difficult, especially with crushing financial debts, and Rothwell makes the push and pull apparent – Mel is likeable but prone to self-sabotage, whether with her ex, Alex (Jocko Sims), or best friend Rory (Conrad Ricamora). It all makes for a highly promising series.
Ruth Wilson as Emily Maitlis and Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew in A Very Royal Scandal.Credit: Christopher Raphael/Blueprint/Sony Pictures Television
A Very Royal Scandal
Amazon Prime
While three episodes gives it a broader scope than Netflix’s April film on the same subject, Scoop, this retelling of Prince Andrew’s car-crash 2019 interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein doesn’t say too much more than its predecessor. Ruth Wilson and Michael Sheen, as respectively the questioning journalist and the boorish royal, are very good together, but there’s little that’s surprising in the way their individual characters are portrayed or their places in the systems built around them.
The Cleaners: sorting through social media’s toxic waste.Credit: Binge
The Cleaners
Binge
Still worryingly relevant, I first saw this German documentary about social media’s toxic digital waste in 2018, and its impact has not faded. German filmmakers Moritz Riesewieck and Hans Block explore the world of content moderation for social media platforms, which have subcontracted the human review to centres in underdeveloped countries. Anonymous Filipino staff reveal the terrible images they have to review – “I’ve seen hundreds of beheadings,” one says – and the impossible decisions they routinely make. The tech giants save on responsibility and cost, as they don’t provide mental health support.
Midnight Family: Drama based on a doco about Mexico City’s private ambulances.Credit: Apple TV+
Midnight Family
Apple TV+
Inspired by the acclaimed 2019 documentary of the same name, this Mexican drama follows Marigaby Tamayo (Renata Vaca), a second-year medical student by day and a paramedic by night in her family’s “bootleg ambulance”, one of the private first responders in Mexico City who negotiate payment with patients and their families even as they treat them. With the bustling metropolis as an unstable backdrop, the show puts a chaotic spin on the medical drama while capturing the rapacious realities of a system that runs on unorthodox deals and the transfer of cash.
Emmanuelle Mattana in Videoland: Nervy banter and affectionate rites of passage.
Videoland
Netflix
Please keep an eye out for this winning Australian romantic comedy, which was made for YouTube but rightfully picked up by Netflix. Immersed in turn-of-the-century VHS culture, it follows 17-year-old video store clerk Hayley (Emmanuelle Mattana), who has just come out as a lesbian but doesn’t know “how to be one”. She has a crush, a best friend, and a supportive boss, which is all Jessica Smith’s micro-comedy – a pair of 25-minute episodes – needs for nervy banter and affectionate rites of passage before a feel-good finale.
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