Watch in cinemas
Film: Sanctuary
Steamy psycho-thriller (Netflix)
The thought of Christopher Abbott (AKA Charlie from Girls) playing a submissive bottom is like catnip to a certain demographic. For everyone else, there’s the reviews. Margaret Qualley plays a professional dominatrix; Abbott her client who’s about to ascend to a CEO position. They share one final session together over a single night in an erotic thriller that the New York Times calls “fantastically dynamic and emphatically theatrical”. – MS
Watch at home
TV: Riverdale
Archie goes nuts (Netflix)
The campest show on TV has finally ended. What began as an atmospheric crime adaptation of the Archie comics soon became a sprawling beast which, over the course of seven seasons, featured time travel, aliens, satanic cults, deranged musical numbers and a drug ring pushing something called “jingle jangle”. “There’s no such thing as going over the top on Riverdale,” Charles Bramesco writes in a loving tribute to a show that entered “the stratosphere of lunacy”. Vale. – MS
TV: Australian Story
Gina Chick rules (ABC)
When 52-year-old Gina Chick won Alone Australia after 67 days in the Tasmanian wilderness, she didn’t want to leave: “I was like, ‘no, no, no!’” she told the Guardian: “I’m just getting started!” (She wrote later about being told not to read the comments: “Yeah, right. I scroll like an addict.”) After living through breast cancer in pregnancy and then the death of her three-year-old, survival is baked in. Her episode of Australian Story airs at 8pm Monday on the ABC. – SH
Film: You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah
Adam Sandler & daughters (Netflix)
In this new comedy helmed by Adam Sandler and both of his daughters, it’s Sunny Sandler who steals the show as the tweenage Stacy Friedman, whose vision for her batmitzvah is more turnt than Torah. The premise has the same low/high stakes as the great high school prom-coms of the 80s and 90s, amplified by the fact that 13-year-olds are even more chaotic. – AG
Film: Aftersun
Sad Paul Mescal (Binge)
Pity be to anyone who missed it at the movies. Charlotte Well’s mesmerising and moving debut is about a young father (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio), on holiday in Turkey in the 1990s. We gave it five stars in cinemas, calling it “brilliantly assured”, “stylistically adventurous”, “beautifully understated” and “emotionally riveting”, all in just one sentence. – SH
Read
Book: But The Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
Buzzy Aus debut
To get a jacket quote from US author/tweeter of the moment Brandon Taylor (Real Life, The Late Americans) is one thing; to be acquired by Taylor for US release takes the cosign to a whole other level. Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s debut is about a young Australian-Malaysian woman on a writers residency in Scotland. She’s trying to write both a post-colonial novel and a thesis on Sylvia Plath – but gets stuck in her thoughts instead. – SH
Book: The Guest by Emma Cline
Book of the summer
The summer of scam may have officially happened in 2018 but its spirit lives on in this delicious, dark-sided novel from Emma Cline, about a sex worker who’s meant to spend the holiday season with her client in a Hamptons-esque mansion. She’s kicked out two weeks in – and decides to grift her way through the rich and unscrupulous. It’s been called the book of the (northern hemisphere) summer: the perfect, anxious holiday read. – MS
Listen
Album: Weedkiller by Ashnikko
Brain worms, personified
Ashnikko’s music sounds like the apocalypse: a psychedelic mashup of industrial, nu-metal, cybergoth, and Y2K dystopia that features a healthy dose of infernal screeching. The TikTok breakout star started out making bawdy come-on anthems; their new album Weedkiller spans everything from “the pleasures of queer sex” to “fantastical treaties on the climate crisis”. – MS
Podcast: Who Shat The Floor At My Wedding?
True crime caper
In 2018, Karen Whitehouse and Helen McLaughlin invited 100 people to their wedding, and someone left a shit on the floor. Thus begins the very real true crime podcast Who Shat The Floor At My Wedding? where guests, staff and forensic experts are interrogated across 13 increasingly hysterical episodes. We spoke to the team behind the viral hit – who have already sold the TV rights. – SH
Cook
Bake: Cheesy garlic loaf
Crowd-pleasing bread
Doing something fancy with something-mostly-ready-made hits that dinner party sweet spot of looking impressive without much actual effort. The only active prep required for Daen Lia’s lovely loaf is turning on an oven (twice), a bit of slicing, a bit of stirring and some viscerally satisfying garlic squeezing. – AG
Book ahead
A concert: Caroline Polachek
Left-field pop
The former lead of Chairlift is coming to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in December with her second album, Desire I Want To Turn Into You – on a world tour which “tilts at a kind of manic derangement, equal parts guiltless joy and nervous energy, cut through with otherworldliness”. There are still tickets available – but they won’t be for long. – SH
