What to Watch on Hulu: July 2024

Immersing yourself in new/old Japanese pop culture turns out to be a great way to be cool in July with Hulu.  This month, there’s a railway tunnel which grants wishes for a price, an acclaimed tale of a high school yuri relationship, and the fate of the world dependent on a guy whose superpower is making holes in things.  For old school action fans, there’s a Takashi Miike remake of a samurai tale featuring a villain you want to see put down hard.  

Another unexpected theme this month might be called “before the remake.”  There’s a suspense drama involving a disgraced cop stuck in an emergency call center, later remade with Jake Gyllenhaal playing the cop.  The tale of a former beauty queen turned trophy wife dealing with the Great Recession was first a documentary before it became a musical.  And a French comedy about a genius anti-authority cleaning lady helping the cops will probably be sanded down for American broadcast TV.

Whatever catches your eye, here’s hoping you’ll also make time to see a film cheering on The Satanic Temple.   

July 1

Get Out–Jordan Peele’s political horror classic turns race relations tensions on their head.  Black photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) travels to upstate New York with his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Alison Williams) to spend the weekend with Rose’s family at the Armitage estate.  Though they seem friendly at first (e.g. neurosurgeon father Dean boasts of being willing to vote for Obama a third time), something is decidedly off about the Armitage clan.  By the time Chjris finds out why there’s something sinister about the Armitages, it may already be too late for him to “get out.”

The Guilty–Gustav Moller’s acclaimed suspense drama uses the most minimal of settings to great effect.  Copenhagen police officer Asger Holm has been temporarily reassigned to nighttime emergency call center duty because he faces a hearing over his unauthorized use of deadly force.  What should be an uneventful shift becomes something else entirely when he receives a phone call from a woman named Iben Ostergard.  She manages to convey to Holm that she’s been kidnapped and a white van is involved before her phone call gets abruptly cut off.  Now, without leaving the call center, Holm must find a way to save the kidnapped woman before it’s too late.   

Hail Satan?

Hail Satan?–Creeped out by Christian Nationalists’ overt attempts to turn America into a Christian theocracy?  Then you need to catch Penny Lane’s wonderfully entertaining documentary about the history of The Satanic Temple.  Despite its name, this religious organization founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry advocates religious pluralism, reproductive freedom, and LGBT rights.  The Satanic Temple’s message that Christian privilege is discrimination needs to be broadcast loudly, especially given Louisiana’s deplorable decision to order the Ten Commandments posted in elementary school rooms.

Margaret–Kenneth Lonergan’s flawed but still worthwhile film delivers a portrait of post-9/11 New York City that captures all of its claustrophobia, congestion, and humanity.  Without spoiling too much, we can say Anna Paquin plays the central character Lisa, a private high school student.  Her life (and those of other people) gets greatly changed when her actions result in an inadvertent death.  

July 2

The Tunnel To Summer, The Exit Of Goodbyes–There is an urban legend of an Urashima Tunnel, a tunnel that can grant any person’s wish…but at a price.  Two outcast students at a rural high school are interested in finding the tunnel but for different reasons.  Kaoru Touno wants to use the tunnel to bring his dead sister Karen back to life.  Transfer student Anzu Hanashiro wants to become a talented and successful manga artist.  Kaoru and Anzu discover the tunnel, but have to deal with its time distortion effects.  Every 3 seconds inside the tunnel equals 2 hours outside the tunnel.  Can the two teens figure things out before it’s too late?

July 3

Red Swan–Wan-Soo wants a perfect life as part of the upper class, so she marries the Hwain Group heir.  She becomes famous as the chairperson of a charitable organization.  Police academy graduate and martial arts expert Seo Do Yoon joins the Group’s security team and becomes Wan-Soo’s bodyguard.  Yet Do Yoon joined the Hwain Group for a particular reason, and it’s through the bodyguard that Wan-Soo will learn a big Hwain Family secret.

The Toys That Built America Season 3–This docuseries looks at the toys that brought seismic economic and cultural shifts to America.  This season will feature looks at (among others): transformable robots, Trivial Pursuit, and video games.

The Tunnel To Summer, The Exit Of Goodbyes

July 4

Land Of Tanabata–University student Yoji “Nanmaru” Minaminaru may be absent-minded, but he’s still much loved by others.  Unknown to his friends, the student happens to have the small supernatural ability to make holes in anything.  When a folklore studies professor disappears after conducting fieldwork in Marukami Village, the search for the academic turns out to be the prelude to a world-shaking crisis.  Can Yoji’s apparently useless power make a difference in avoiding disaster?. 

July 5

The Monk And The Gun–It’s 2006, and the Kingdom of Bhutan is transitioning towards democracy by holding mock elections across the country.  This ensemble comedy shows how the impending exercise affects an assortment of people.  They include a monk named Tashi who has been sent by the lama of Ura to bring him two guns before the full moon (aka election day) to “set it right.”  There’s also an election official named Tshering who arrives in Ura to teach its villagers about such things as voting and political rallies.   

July 8

13 Assassins–In 1844 Japan, Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu kills and/or rapes anybody he likes with impunity because his half-brother the Shogun protects him.  Now Lord Naritsugu is slated to ascend to the Shogunate Council despite his various unpunished crimes.  Justice Minister Sir Doi Toshitsura realizes civil war will happen if the Shogun goes through with Lord Naritsugu’s promotion.  So he hires trusted samurai Shimada Shinzaemon to assassinate the evil lord.  However, Hanbei, leader of Lord Naritsugu’s loyal retainers, continually succeeds in frustrating Shinzaemon’s efforts to complete the job.  The legendary Takashi Miike directed this violent historical actioner.

Jesus Camp–Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s documentary takes viewers inside Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kids On Fire” charismatic Christian summer camp.  Here, the children are devout Christians trained to intensify their beliefs so they can become part of an army aimed at pushing America towards accepting conservative Christian values.  The film keeps things objective, but the average broke-ass viewer is likely to yell “F**k you” repeatedly at the screen.  Are these camps where today’s openly fascist Christian Nationalists came from?  

The Queen Of Versailles–Photographer Lauren Greenfield’s documentary takes viewers into the lives of wealthy Florida time-share mogul David Siegel and his former beauty queen wife Jackie.  Versailles House, modeled after the Palace of Versailles, was to be the mansion the Siegels and their seven children would move into after leaving their 26,000 square foot “starter” mansion.  However, the Great Recession of 2008 dealt a serious blow to Siegel’s company, forcing the Siegel family to live a “greatly reduced” lifestyle.  How husband and wife respond in different ways to this change in fortune illuminates both their character and their hard-knock roots.

The Animal Kingdom

July 9

Barb And Star Go To Vista Del Mar–Nebraska-based best friends Barb (Kristen Wiig) and Star (Annie Mumolo) decide to take their first trip together to the Florida resort town of Vista Del Mar.  When both women meet Edgar Paget (Jamie Dornan), they both fall for and lust after him.  But what neither woman knows is that Edgar is actually in the resort town to help his evil employer wipe Vista Del Mar off the map with a swarm of deadly mosquitoes.  Expect lots of silliness and a musical number or two.

July 11 

The Animal Kingdom–In this French fantasy tale, people have suddenly started mutating into human-animal hybrids.  Non-mutated humans react by confining these hybrids away from the rest of the population lest they accidentally injure someone with their animal appendages.  Teenager Emile’s mother Lana was locked away for having fur grow around her eyes.  Emile himself has such teen problems as adjusting to a new school and challenging his father’s authority.  How will he handle the new problem of growing fur and claws?  Any resemblances in this film to the present day politicization of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 are not coincidental.

Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer–How did a professor of nursing revolutionize the investigation of serial killing?  This docuseries executive produced by Dakota and Elle Fanning recounts the story of Dr. Ann Burgess.  She was a Boston College professor of nursing who worked with patients suffering from traumatic experiences.  Thanks to a fateful phone call from the FBI, Dr. Burgess would interview such famous serial killers as Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper.  Listening to the interview tapes, the professor would start noticing behavior patterns.  That realization led to the idea of learning to think like a serial killer, or what we know today as profiling.      

July 12

Fast Charlie–Biloxi-based mob fixer “Fast Charlie” Swift (Pierce Brosnan) is toying with retirement.  When ambitious young up-and-coming mobster Beggar Mercado stages a bloody coup against Charlie’s boss Stan (James Caan), it looks like the fixer might become one of the coup casualties.  Unfortunately for Beggar, Charlie may be old, but he’s still resourceful and ruthless enough to take out anybody trying to plant him six feet under.

High Intellectual Potential – on Hulu in July

High Intellectual Potential Seasons 1-3–-Morgane Alvaro is a cleaning lady and a single mother to three small kids.  She also has an IQ of 160…which hasn’t exactly helped improve her lot in life.  When the cops discover Morgane’s genius, they want to recruit her to join them.  The big problem, though, is that this genius cleaning lady hates cops, rules, and authority figures.  But that doesn’t mean Morgane isn’t smart enough to come up with her own quid pro quo.  Watch this French original.  It’s very likely the copaganda bent of American TV means the upcoming remake will seriously tone down Morgane’s anti-cop attitude.

Scrambled–Nellie Robinson may make a living designing jewelry on Etsy.  Despite appearing happy and successful to her friends, her main worry is the constant feeling that she missed out on how to make adulthood work for her.  When a friend warns Nellie of the difficulties of getting pregnant after the early 30s and the need to harvest one’s eggs immediately, the jewelry maker’s determined to raise $8,000 for the harvesting job.  To Nellie, preserving her eggs also means preserving control of her life options.

July 15

Bloom Into You Season 1–Yuu Koito is a romantic at heart who waits for her heart to flutter when someone confesses they love her.  But her lack of reaction when a male junior high classmate makes such a confession to her makes Yuu realize she doesn’t know how to experience love firsthand.  Yuu’s dilemma on responding to her male classmate worsens when she enters high school.  Seeing flawless student council president Touko Nanami rejecting a love confession makes her an obvious mentor for Yuu.  But when Touko confesses her love for Yuu, the new student’s emotional life soon becomes very complicated.

Ya Boy Kongming! Season 1–During the Three Kingdoms wars of third century China, Zhuge Kongming earned a reputation as one of that era’s greatest tacticians.  Before he dies during the Battle of Wuzhang Plains, Kongming wishes that if he ever reincarnates he hopes it would be in a far more peaceful era.  Cut to modern day Tokyo, where the reincarnated tactician wakes up with a younger body and his memories intact.  However, his unfamiliarity with modern life leaves him at a serious disadvantage until he encounters aspiring singer Eiko Tsukimi.  She teaches him about the modern world, and he in turn sees her potential to be a great singer.  In his new role as Eiko’s manager, Kongming’s determined to make Eiko a success…even by using the military stratagems he employed in third century China.

Bloom Into You – on Hulu in July

July 17

UnPrisoned Season 2–It’s the new season of the Kerry Washington-led comedy about the chaos brought to a therapist’s family by the return of the therapist’s father, who’s just finished serving a 17-year prison sentence.  This time, the Alexander family’s more of a mess than ever.  Paige’s (Washington) therapist practice has developed problems.  Teenaged Finn has severe anxiety issues.  Edwin (Delroy Lindo) still hasn’t figured out how to adjust to civilian life.  It’s time to bring in a rule-breaking “family radical healing coach!”

July 19

The American (2023)–Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet Academy has a well-earned reputation as the most competitive and hostile dance school in the world.  Very few foreigners have ever made it through its main training program.  Dealing with both first love and the demands of the Bolshoi’s tutor Tatiyana Volkova (Diane Kruger), American Joy Womack (Talia Ryder) struggles to achieve perfection in the art of ballet.  Based on Womack’s true story.   

July 23

Femme–Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, “Candyman”) may be an effeminate gay in real life.  On stage as drag performer Aphrodite Banks, Jules projects swaggering strength.  However, while on a cigarette run at the nearby convenience store, the Aphrodite costume triggers Preston and his gang to gay bash the drag artist and thereby ruin Aphrodite’s career.  Weeks later, when Jules ventures out to a gay sauna, he discovers Preston is another sauna patron, albeit closeted.  The two men start dating, but it’s unclear what Jules’ endgame is.  Does he want a revenge-porn video to ruin Preston’s life?  Or is he happy providing a safe space to let Preston get in touch with his gayness?      

July 25

Wayne Brady: The Family Remix–In this docu-reality series, “Let’s Make A Deal” host and now open pansexual actor Wayne Brady allows cameras to follow him and his family around the clock as they deal with personal issues and the business operations of his production company A Wayne & Mandie Creative.  It’s a chance to show the world what a combination of blended family and chosen family looks like as they agree to love each other, stay in each other’s lives, and fight the good fight together.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song – on Hulu in July

July 26

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song–Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s documentary is partly a biographical portrait of idiosyncratic pop star Leonard Cohen.  But it’s also the story behind one of Cohen’s classic songs, “Hallelujah,” a masterwork which took literal years to complete as layers of soul and enchantment were added to the song and lyrics were written and rewritten in something like 80 drafts.  John Cale and the late Jeff Buckley would play significant roles in popularizing Cohen’s song.

The Origin Of Evil–Ex-convict Stephane, who’s fallen on hard times, introduces herself to wealthy restauranteur Serge as his long-lost child out of wedlock.  She secures an invitation to visit his villa in Porquerolles (off the Cote d’Azur).  The other members of Serge’s family are either crazy or less than thrilled having this interloper arrive.  Serge’s trying to use Stephane to foil his family’s efforts to impose a guardianship on him.  But Stephane has a plan of her own,  which begins with her lying as smoothly as a convicted felon ex-president that she owns the anchovy-packing plant she used to work at.  Nobody’s who they say they are, and not everybody will live to the end of the film.

Tim Heidecker: An Evening With Tim Heidecker–-Comedian Tim Heidecker of the Tim and Eric comedy duo parodies those slick stand-up comedy specials that can be found on Netflix and Hulu.  Here, he is Tim Heidecker, a stand-up comedian who’s a macho hack.  He forgets lines or screws them up, re-tries comedy bits that didn’t work the first time, and even messes up his communications with the AV crew.  Most damningly, beneath the attempted humor, this Heidecker has nothing insightful to say about the human condition.

July 29

Futurama Season 12—It’s the return of the second favorite Matt Groening animated series.  Join the Planet Express crew as they face birthday party games to the death, impossibly cute beanbags, and the secret five million year history behind coffee.  And will Fry and Leela continue living together, or drive each other crazy?  Expect more than a few jokes about 21st century culture mixed into this future setting.