WandaVision: Episode 2

Episode 2

Wanda and Vision prepare a magic skit for the town’s Talent Show to better fit in at Westview. She befriends neighbor Geraldine (Teyonah Parris) and tries to win the approval of queen bee of suburbia, Dottie Jones (Emma Caulfield Ford), but a freak accident with a radio calling out her name and asking who is doing “this” to her ends up with bloody hands. Earlier that day, Wanda finds a toy helicopter in the front yard, its red/yellow motif sticking out like a sore thumb in the predominantly black and white environment. Vision tries some chewing gum at the boys’ neighborhood watch meeting, causing his inner mechanism to malfunction. Seemingly drunk, he unwittingly reveals his abilities at the talent show, but is deflected and hidden by Wanda’s own powers. As they get home, Wanda grows a baby bump out of nowhere. The two hear a noise outside and find a beekeeper in white emerging from a manhole. Wanda says NO and rewinds to the baby bump moment, as they start to transition from black and white to full color.

WandaVision: Episode 1

Episode 1

Newlyweds Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) move to a nice suburban home. He now works for a computational company, touted by his colleagues as responsible for 300% increase in productivity. They liken him to a machine that gets the job done quickly. He vehemently disagrees instead of taking it as a compliment. The two prepare for an event marked with a heart on their calendar, not really knowing what it is. She thinks it’s their anniversary, but he later discovers that it’s a dinner date at their home with his boss and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Hart. With the help of nosy neighbor Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), Wanda prepares a dinner in vain but manages to pull through. As the dinner small talk begins, the couple is grilled with probing questions about their marriage, to which neither of them has any answers. As the duo celebrate the success of their first house party, the screen zooms out, revealing that the two are literally starring in a television sitcom being watched by an unknown individual holding a remote in a control room.

Promising Young Woman

♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Cassandra Thomas (Carey Mulligan) is someone many considered to be a promising young woman. Being one of the best students in med school, everyone expected her to graduate on top of her class and become a doctor. That changed when an unfortunate incident led to her dropping out. Flash forward seven years later, she now works at a coffee shop and still resides with her parents who are starting to get concerned about her future. She also frequents bars on a weekly basis pretending to be too drunk to function and waiting for a nice guy to take her home, many of whom end up trying to take advantage of her. Her modus operandi and raison d’être are put to the test with the arrival of Dr. Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham), a classmate of hers back in the day who is keen on dating her now. Will she take a detour or continue dwelling on the past and carry on with her revenge plot?

Locked Down

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Couple Linda (Anne Hathaway) and Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are way past their honeymoon stage and are ready to go their separate ways, except that they can’t because of the current lockdowns imposed in London. The two are forced to cohabitate despite their newfound animosity for one another. She is the CEO of Miracore in the United Kingdom and has just been asked to fire her entire team due to redundancy. He has been recently furloughed due to the pandemic but is being asked to report to work again due to manpower shortage. Prompted by the current circumstances, the two are forced to reevaluate their lives. She is tasked to retrieve a £3 Million diamond at display at Harrods and it so happens that he is the assigned van driver from the freight company handling its transport. With protocols breached and security less stringent because of the pandemic, they realize that their chances of stealing the diamond and getting away with it is much higher than they actually thought.

Pieces of a Woman

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Newlyweds Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Sean (Shia LaBeouf) are expecting their first child together, a daughter they plan to name Yvette. He hails from Seattle and works in construction, his current project being a bridge he plans to complete with his team just in time for his daughter’s birth. She comes from a family of three women from Massachusetts and always seems to be in loggerheads with her mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn), who does not really approve of her husband. Excited to be a grandmother, she buys the couple a minivan, much to his chagrin. As Martha goes into labor, Sean calls the midwife assigned to them to assist in the birth, except that she has an emergency and is not available that night. Enter Eva (Molly Parker), another midwife they barely know yet have no choice but to trust. As what is supposed to be the happiest moment of their lives becomes their worst nightmare, the pair tries to piece together what remains of their broken family.

Tagpuan

♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

MANILA. Allan (Alfred Vargas) and Agnes (Iza Calzado) are living the happily married life with their only son. Or so he thought. Being a successful businessman, he deals with things with facts and numbers. A frustrated artist, she values emotion over logic. HONG KONG. While on a business trip, he crosses paths with a Filipino-Chinese woman who claims her name to be Tanya (Shaina Magdayao). She admits that she fancies him and begins to bombard him with anecdotes about her life in exchange for sex and connections for getting a visa for the US. After she gets what she needs from him, she disappears. NEW YORK. Agnes is now living her American dream as a promising playwright. Husband and wife reconnect as he searches for Tanya in Chinatown, but Agnes still wants an annulment. As Tanya resurfaces in his life, he tries to decide which woman would make him complete again.

Fan Girl

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Obsessed teenager Jane (Charlie Dizon) considers herself as the biggest fan of matinee idol Paulo Avelino (Paulo Avelino). She buys all of his posters and magazine covers, knows every useless trivia about his life, and watches all of his films on the first day of screening. But perhaps what can be considered as her most daring adventure as a fan girl to date is attending his mall show and locating his pick-up truck afterwards, hopping on to and hiding at the back until he unwittingly drives both of them away to a far-flung province. Falling asleep due to the long trip, she wakes up in the dark with the vehicle parked right outside the locked gate of a big decrepit mansion. Sneaking in, she will soon discover that the guy she has been idolizing all this time is not really who she imagined him to be.

Soul

♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Jazz pianist Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) bounces from gig to gig, finding it hard to land his dream job. When his temporary stint as a music teacher becomes an employment contract offer, his mother Libba (Phylicia Rashad) is relieved. And then Joe gets a last-minute invitation to join the Jazz quartet of saxophone legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett). Unable to contain his joy, his clumsiness leads to his untimely death by falling in a manhole. Soon, his soul is transported to a queue for the Great Beyond. Hesitant to succumb to death, he manages to escape to a garden called the Great Before, where new souls are being prepped for their debut on Earth. There, he fakes his way to becoming the mentor of 22 (Tina Fey), a soul who has been trapped there for thousands of years, reluctant to partake in life on Earth. The two reach an agreement. He helps her get her Earth card so she can give it to him, and then he can go back to his body and she can live forever in pre-life.

Wonder Woman 1984

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

A young Diana joins an athletic competition in Themyscira and almost bests her older and more experienced contenders, had she not decided to take a shortcut that would jeopardize her victory. Aunt Antiope (Robin Wright) reiterates the importance of fairness and truth, while mother Hyppolyta (Connie Nielsen) reassures her that one day she will be worthy to don the golden winged armor of legendary Amazon warrior Asteria. Flash forward to 1984, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) works at the Smithsonian, her Wonder Woman alter ego surfacing incognito once in a while as your friendly neighborhood superhero, preventing road accidents and stopping small-time mall heists. One of her adventures leads to the discovery of a seemingly fake citrine crystal with a Latin inscription that suggests wish-fulfillment capabilities. Unconvinced, Diana does not openly voice out her wish, yet does so anyway, while insecure colleague Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) secretly desires to be like her new co-worker. Soon enough, they find out that TV personality and Ponzi scheme scammer Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) is also after the artifact, leading the duo to dig deeper into the relic’s origins as what they wish for start to come true.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Obliged to hold a recording session of some of her greatest hits in Chicago, Mother of the Blues Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) takes a break from her packed touring schedule and heads north along with her band. Her mere presence stirs the dynamics between the African American communities of the north and the south, while her demands also result in tensions running high at the recording studio. It does not help that upstart trumpeter Levee (Chadwick Boseman) keeps fanning the flames by asserting his dominance and trying to outmaneuver not just his bandmates, but even Ma Rainey herself. As day turns into night and songs eventually get immortalized on vinyl, the group reflects on their individual experiences in the music scene of 1920’s America, from racially charged issues all the way to high ambitions and making it big in an industry that only cares about the money their talent can rake in.

The Prom

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Somewhere in Broadway, a new play about Eleanor Roosevelt’s life gets lambasted by critics; its lead stars dismissed as aging narcissists. Two-time Tony Award winner Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) turns to alcohol, while her openly gay leading man Barry Glickman (James Corden) thinks taking up a cause could bring them their much-needed PR. Meanwhile, forever chorus girl Angie Dickinson (Nicole Kidman) stumbles upon a local scandal in Edgewater on Twitter. Next thing they know, they are all on their way to Indiana on a school bus full of theater kids in a tour organized by Juilliard graduate and co-worker Trent Oliver (Andrew Rannells). There they get embroiled in an ongoing high school drama involving young lesbian Emma Nolan (Jo Ellen Pellman), whose school’s PTA led by conservative Mrs. Greene (Kerry Washington) decides to cancel prom to prevent her from attending with her yet unknown girlfriend. What follows is a battle of belief systems regarding the ever-relevant theme of inclusivity peppered with glitter, impromptu song-and-dance numbers, and all that Broadway sass.

Mank

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

1940’s Hollywood. Orson Welles (Tom Burke) preps for his big screen debut with Citizen Kane and enlists the help of screenwriter Herman J. Maniewics (Gary Oldman) to revise the screenplay. Recovering from an injury, “Mank” is provided with the assistance that he needs, one of them being his secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Colins), who quickly notices some similarities shared by the characters with some real-life personalities. A series of flashbacks shines light on Mank’s inspiration for the material, mainly influenced by his rubbing elbows with Classic Hollywood bigwigs such as film producer Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley), MGM co-founder LB Mayer (Arliss Howard), media mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) as well as his mistress, actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried). Given the provocative nature of his script, Mank will have to carefully navigate the upper echelons of the industry’s powers-that-be while dealing with deadlines, writer’s block, and his growing problem with alcoholism.