This week’s picks include the wild adaptation of Nick Cave’s book, Joel Edgerton in the moving Train Dreams, a French-language remake of Dangerous Liaisons and a deeply personal documentary about New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams.

The Death of Bunny Munro ★★★ (Binge)

From caterwauling punk to national treasure, Nick Cave has forged a genuinely distinctive voice over the last 50 years. Few musicians have been able to make one of his songs their own, and on the evidence of this seesawing limited series, adapted from Cave’s 2009 novel of the same name, bringing his writing to the screen may be equally challenging. A coming-of-age crisis brought into focus by sexual addiction and big daddy delusions, The Death of Bunny Munro is a pungent British drama that wants to have it all.

Perhaps it’s left out of kilter by the sheer swagger of Matt Smith as Bunny Munro, a seller of women’s cosmetics – “by appointment”, not door-to-door – who’s a self-obsessed lothario and serial cheater. Bunny’s with another woman the night his wife, Libby (Sarah Greene), left depressed by his deceptions, takes her life. Bunny’s first instinct is to offload his bookish, lonely nine-year-old son, Bunny Junior (Rafael Mathe), on his in-laws and get back to seducing his clients, but circumstances put the pair on the road together.

Written by Pete Jackson (Somewhere Boy) and directed by Isabella Eklof (Industry), these six succinct episodes, set in Brighton circa 2003, are conventional in structure: Bunny is an usurious narcissist, Bunny Junior hopes for paternal love, their situation worsens and father and son face an endgame. But you can’t overestimate the warped, carnivorous charisma Smith invests Bunny with. The long ago Doctor Who gave even The Crown a licentious charge, and here he’s cock of the walk. Exhibit A: Libby’s funeral, where Bunny skips out mid-service for a quick cigarette and a spot of self pleasure.

The twisted guts of Cave’s novel was Bunny’s internal monologues, which aren’t heard directly here; the carnal obsession of an entire chapter where Bunny’s sexual fantasies about Kylie Minogue run wild is replaced by him nodding approvingly as her song plays on the radio. Mathe gives a terrifically tender performance, gaining sad understanding, while Libby makes repeated spectral returns, but the story lacks a balancing perspective. Nonetheless, I laughed when Bunny labelled sex “a liaison kangaroo” – that’s uncut Cave Aussie idiom.

A masculinity this tyre-fire toxic doesn’t get tolerated, but even as Bunny loses his touch and crosses sharp lines, there’s a needle being finely threaded. You see how Bunny’s still terrified of his own monstrous father, and there are moments of generosity with Bunny Junior. But the otherworldly realm the final episode traverses feels like an odd sidestep after all the primitive carnality and selfishness. Think carefully before falling too deeply into Bunny Munro’s arms.

Train Dreams ★★★★ (Netflix)

Australian actor Joel Edgerton has never been nominated for an Academy Award, but his compelling performance in this period drama should deservedly change that. The story of an ordinary man, Edgerton’s Robert Grainier, Train Dreams is a period drama fashioned with lyrical wonder, tactile early 20th-century detail, and hints of the unknowable. It’s anything but biographical – time is fleeting, as if a changing world is always a step ahead of Robert, a stoic logger trying to craft personal contentment.

Directed by Clint Bentley and written by Greg Kwedar, who previously teamed on the outstanding 2023 prison drama Sing Sing, Train Dreams unfolds in America’s Pacific Northwest. The vast, ancient forests provide the means for unfettered, and eventually destructive, national growth, harnessed by Robert and his fellow lumberjacks in conditions gnarly and otherworldly. The philosophical seer of American cinema, Terrence Malick, is the abiding influence, particularly 1978’s Days of Heaven.

Edgerton’s defining trait on screen is his watchfulness. His characters take in everything, and with Robert, that becomes an overwhelming task that always has a deeply felt intimacy. Shot in gorgeously faltering light, his cabin life scenes with his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones), feel like reveries. That they’re matched by regrets sharpens the bittersweet teeth of this story. It’s an outstanding film, leaving just one real concern: can’t Australia find a movie this good for Edgerton?

The Seduction ★★½ (HBO Max)

Just three years after the last English-language streaming version of Dangerous Liaisons, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th-century novel of aristocratic deceit and romantic spite, this six-part French-language remake starts promisingly, with immersive production design and a focus on the female characters regaining a measure of power in pre-revolutionary Paris, but it slowly recedes. As a knowing mentor, Diane Kruger is the imperious Madame de Rosemonde, but the friction between her scoundrel nephew, Valmont (Vincent Lacoste), and the young woman he seduces, Isabelle (Anamaria Vartolomei), can’t sustain a dry plot.

Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds ★★★★ (DocPlay)

Coming home takes many forms in this deeply personal documentary about New Zealand singer-songwriter (and one-time Melbourne resident) Marlon Williams, who returned to Lyttelton, the port town where he grew up, to record Te Whare Tīwekaweka, an album composed entirely in Te Reo Maori. Director Ursula Grace Williams (no relation) captures the tenacity and spark of artistic creation alongside the rediscovery of heritage – Williams had lost his ability to speak in his ancestral tongue when he started primary school. With Lorde a guest on one song, it’s a deeply engrossing process.

LA’s Finest ★★½ (Stan*)

If you want an action-oriented police procedural with a female focus, the two seasons of this 2019 law enforcement drama offer dependable star power and familiar Los Angeles angles. Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba play LAPD detectives Syd Burnett and Nancy McKenna – the former is a character reprised from the 2003 blockbuster Bad Boys II, the latter is hiding a criminal past. There’s a lot of familiar buddy-cop banter here, with plots from numerous other LA cop shows. Union elevates her role, while Alba proves that her transition to action star is a work in progress.

Leanne Morgan: Unspeakable Things ★★★ (Netflix)

US stand-up star Leanne Morgan had one point of difference after another on her debut stand-up special, I’m Every Woman: she was a 50-something woman from America’s rural south, full of life experience and wry observations. Unspeakable Things, her follow-up, finds Morgan balancing her outsider stance with the realities of being a high-profile star who also has a successful Netflix sitcom, Leanne. For the most part, she skilfully plays the two worlds off – she’s now an outsider in Hollywood, working with Reese Witherspoon and feeling motherly towards a stripper at a wild industry night out.

*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.

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