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A Japanese actor turned director, Hikari writes and directs Rental House, a low-key Tokyo drama showcasing the rejuvenation of actor Brendan Fraser. Fraser plays a bumbling, affable actor who joins a company which hires out actors to impersonate real people: a crowd at a wedding, a fake apologist lover, imaginary family. This is a Japanese phenomenon that we rarely encounter in the west and it offers Fraser the chance to spar with delicate issues as he pretends to be a young girl’s father in order to secure a good school; pretends to interview a famous actor to assist with dementia; and pretends to marry a girl so she can leave the country with her parents satisfied. The movie is delightfully shot across the panoply of Tokyo, along its train lines and highways, and down its oh-so-atmospheric laneways. Flirting with sentimentality but never succumbing, Rental House is a genuine tearjerker that, for once, works, by tapping our emotions as they should be tapped.

What an odd yet compelling and moving streaming series Severance is! Its premise is very much the sort of thing legendary sci-fi author Philip K. Dick would have dreamed up: a corporation (Lumon) offers a brain operation whereby your work self and your at-home self live separate lives. The four main characters of the show form a strange administrative team in the bowels of Lumon’s atmospheric headquarters, corridor after corridor of gleaming white passageways. Macro Data Refining mysteriously and intuitively collect different numbers on a screen and “refine” them into collective pots. Like Dick’s novels, the show is a thriller tackling significant topics around the existential schisms of the four heroes. The brilliant lead role by Adam Scott, playing the very different “innie” Mark S and “outie” Mark Scout, stands out, but stellar performances pour in from Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and John Turturro as Mark S’s work colleagues; Tramell Tillman and Patricia Arquette excel in villainous roles. Season 1 set out the weird world of the severed workers and exposed key mysteries. Season 2 is a rollercoaster of tension as Lumon’s dastardly plans reach for fruition while the “innies” (and one “outie”) strive for clarity and, perhaps, freedom. The cinematography is spellbinding, the music is wonderful, and the script and dialogue are first rate. Watch both seasons of Severance, rejoice in modern cinematic perfection, and pine for Season 3!

Created by brilliant screenwriter/filmmaker Vince Gilligan, nine-episode Pluribus offers a sci-fi scenario that will deter some viewers but hopefully entrance others. Very much anchored by a superb star turn by Rhea Seehorn as romance writer Carol Sturka, the show posits that Carol finds herself one of a couple of handfuls of humans not turned into seemingly blissed-out, hivemind-connect, now billions strong and forced to accommodate the immune. The first episode is flat-out bananas, as Carol experiences a wave of conversions into happy zombies while the love of her life dies. Irascible, unstoppable, and profane, Carol embarks on a mission to return the world to sanity. This type of show hinges on its screenplay and direction, and both of them never miss a beat as Carol’s quest flails and flounders. Visually stunning and brilliantly paced, Pluribus needs few actors other than crowd extras and bit players (such as most of the other immune people from around the world), but Seehorn’s acting is complemented by fine performances by Karolina Wydra (as Carol’s “chaperone” from the infected) and Carlos-Manuel Vesga (as an uncompromising immune Paraguayan). Interesting issues such as ethics, freedom, and agency are explored with poise. All in all, Pluribus is a hoot and Season 2 cannot arrive fast enough.

Based on a 2011 novella by celebrated American novelist Denis Johnson (who died in 2017), Train Dreams is a brilliant adaptation by writer-director Clint Bentley. Gently and lyrically, it tells the very ordinary life of an itinerant logger helping clear the land of America in the early Twentieth Century, a very ordinary life that is revealed, through memories and dreams and stunning American wilderness, to be extraordinary, blessed with an embrace of beauty and human variety. Robert Grainier, played with great depth by Joel Edgerton, almost stumbles upon his true love, Gladys (another fine performance, this time by Felicity Jones), and his life with her and their baby, punctuated by unbearably homesick stretches traveling by train to remote logging stands, is sublimely portrayed. Train Dreams is not a film underpinned by plot (although Bentley rolls through Grainier’s life with quite some tension, using, among other artistry, the atmospheric voiceover of Will Patton), rather it is mood and visuals and Edgerton’s stoic but expressive face that carry it to a highly satisfying end. Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography is a key feature, as is Bryce Dressner’s oblique, haunting soundtrack. Memorable.

A genteel, serious drama from Noah Baumbach, Jay Kelly is the tale of a megastar actor butting against a crisis of meaning as he ages. The genius of this film is the casting of George Clooney as Jay Kelly, the star as famous as Clooney is in real life. Clooney not only looks the part, his exploration of his character’s sudden realization that his daughters have flown the coop, leaving him with unfathomable guilt for his years of neglect, is superb. Adam Sandler plays a tubby manager-maestro who flails as his charge rejects his next film and heads to Tuscany for a tribute presentation, and Sandler’s portrayal is nuanced and pointed. Baumbach’s script is one nonstop flurry of sharp dialogue and his direction is sure-footed. Not a lot is signaled as at stake, yet for Jay Kelly, his entire existential foundation is at risk, and it is this tension, between the outside world of the star and the inner search for life’s purpose, that impels the movie toward an enigmatic climax. Jay Kelly will not set the film world on fire but it is a pleasure to watch and leaves the viewer with important questions to pursue. Recommended.