Something to watch tonight: Friday 7 March

Thelma (Margolin, 2024)

An actu­al laugh-out-loud moment from Monday’s Oscar show was 95-year-old legend June Squibb present­ing the Makeup and Hair award with Scarlett Johansson and jok­ing that she was actu­ally Bill Skarsgård and that the real June Squibb was watch­ing back home on the couch.

Whoever it was, they looked sen­sa­tion­al in purple and reminded us that every day is a good day if you still have a sense of humour.

Ms. Squibb is back in the spot­light thanks to last year’s sur­prise hit, Thelma. This is some of what I said about it when it landed in cinemas in September:

Squibb (Nebraska) plays a wid­ow who decides to take the law into her own hands after she is scammed by some reprobates.

Needing help get­ting across town to the PO box where she sent the money, she enlists the help of Ben (the late Richard Roundtree) from the loc­al retire­ment vil­lage because he has a souped-up mobil­ity scoot­er. For a while it becomes an LA road movie as they slowly make their way across town, ineptly pur­sued by her daugh­ter (Parker Posey), son-in-law (Clark Gregg) and sym­path­et­ic stoner grand­son Danny (Fred Hechsinger).

Based on the mar­ket­ing, I was expect­ing it to have more action but in fact it’s a sweet and sens­it­ive story about try­ing to bal­ance the two com­pet­it­ive aspects of get­ting old – ‘deni­al’ in which we are determ­ined to not go gently into that good night and ‘accept­ance’ where we learn to live with our dimin­ished capa­cit­ies in the hope we can eke out anoth­er few trips around the sun. Thelma makes a strong case for both.

Also fea­tured in that September news­let­ter: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (“I feel like this is a couple of drafts short of being truly sat­is­fy­ing but I did enjoy the phys­ic­al craft on dis­play – the pup­petry, make-up effects and set dress­ing are all first rate”); loc­al doc­u­ment­ary Maurice & I and the bril­liant action thrill­er Rebel Ridge.

Reminder: Our spe­cial 400^th news­let­ter spe­cial deal is avail­able until 13 March. Get 50% off a full-year sub­scrip­tion to Funerals & Snakes – that’s only $2.50 a month for a daily recom­mend­a­tion to help you decide what to watch each night.

Where to watch Thelma

Aotearoa: Streaming on Netflix

Australia: Streaming on Netflix, Binge or FoxtelNow

Canada: Streaming on Paramount+

Ireland & UK: Streaming on Sky

India: Streaming on Hotstar

USA: Streaming on Hulu