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The Killer ★★★★
Netflix, Friday

David Fincher strikes a delicious balance with this neo-noir thriller about a methodical hitman: it is one of his slightest but most enjoyable feature films. Calibrated with exacting precision, this story of an unnamed paid assassin – played with cool precision by a perfectly cast Michael Fassbender – is a skilful fantasy that draws you in through its exacting detail and menacing tone. Consider it the antidote to John Wick.

Michael Fassbender in The Killer. Credit: Netflix

Heard mostly in voice-over, the deliberately nondescript Killer monologues a professional philosophy based on preparation and emotional detachment. “Forbid empathy,” he notes, but what he says and does begin to diverge after a job in Paris goes wrong. The Killer realises he’s the kind of problem he usually takes care of, forcing him to break the rules he works by but also offering up a vision of a ruthless operator where the cracks start to show.

Fincher directs this with stylish flourishes and mordant humour. A nocturnal battle with a rival is masterfully assembled, while a supporting cast that includes Tilda Swinton make the most of their respective scenes. In trying not to make a broader point, the director of Fight Club and Gone Girl ends up revealing a little. When explaining himself, the Killer sounds like a veteran Hollywood filmmaker: “This is what it takes, if you want to succeed.”

The Curse ★★★★
Paramount+, Saturday

There are numerous eye-popping moments in the first episode of this disconcerting existential comedy: they span a spectrum that goes from Stanley Kubrick directing Curb Your Enthusiasm to a much-discussed (prosthetic) penis. But this coolly unhinged collaboration between television disruptor Nathan Fielder and independent filmmaker Benny Safdie, which is topped by a withering Emma Stone lead performance, isn’t content with showcasing shocks to the system. They’re merely part of a sustained vision that aims to tear apart expectations.

Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder star as married couple Whitney and Asher in The CurseCredit: Beth Garrabrant/Paramount+

In the rundown New Mexico town of Espanola, married couple Whitney and Asher Siegel (Stone and Fielder) are shooting the pilot for their property reality series, which revolves around Whitney’s carbon-neutral “passive housing” and revitalising the primarily working-class community. Even as their shifty producer, Dougie Schecter (Safdie), tries to manufacture on-air intrigue, their altruistic intentions are dismantled. The show’s corporate partners merely want publicity, the couple are trying to profit from gentrification, and a local television station interview ends with disastrous ramifications.

I cannot emphasise enough that The Curse is a weekly episode watch. Most episodes are an hour long and they are uncomfortably thorough in revealing the flaws of these characters. With creepy camera moves and lengthy exchanges that reveal an amoral undertow, Fielder and Safdie’s writing isn’t willing to cut away after an embarrassing punchline. The excruciating tone and self-implicating scenarios move from the delicious to the damning. “That’s a beautiful idea,” Asher tells Whitney, after she suggests a GoFundMe for people they’re disadvantaging.

Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone in The Curse.Credit: Beth Garrabrant/A24/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

The show’s title refers to a young girl who puts a curse on Asher after an improvised segment for the show goes wrong, and there are 1970s horror film traits – an eerie tone, distorted reflections – throughout the 10 episodes. But at its heart this is a contemporary portrait: there’s a staggering selfishness and hypocrisy, exacerbated by the fake reality show segments. Stone’s peppy energy has a malignant drive, whether Whitney is performatively playing at activism, manipulating indigenous “friends”, or railing against her slumlord father (Corbin Bernsen) before asking him for money.

Fielder, who directed the majority of episodes, takes the awkward screen persona he delivered in his recent cult hit, The Rehearsal, and inverts it so that Asher’s lack of empathy is topped with sociopathic spurts of rage. That’s typical of the show’s unerring progress, which seeks to reveal the obscured reality. Even the passive house turns out to be passive-aggressive. The Curse is going to be too astringent for some viewers, but there’s nothing else like this extraordinary series on television.

Krysten Ritter in Orphan Black: Echoes.Credit:

Orphan Black: Echoes
Stan

A capable science-fiction thriller, this spin-off does enough in its initial episodes to distinguish itself from the original Orphan Black, a paranoid and deeply intimate mystery about a woman (Tatiana Maslany) who discovers that she is part of a sisterhood of clones. Set decades into the future in the same storytelling universe, Echoes focuses on Lucy (Krysten Ritter), who has an unknown past, laboratory memories, and a desire to escape. It’s obvious what the show will address, but there’s enough tension and uncertainty here to make it interesting to devotees and neophytes alike.

Jessie Buckley in Fingernails.Credit: Apple TV+

Fingernails
Apple TV+

Like Yorgos Lanthimos with 2015’s The Lobster, Christos Nikou is a Greek filmmaker making his English language debut with a dystopian tale that explores love’s dimensions and is tinged with absurdity. In a near-future where romantic compatibility can be proven with a test, a romantic triangle develops between a woman (Jessie Buckley) who has passed the test with her partner (Jeremy Allen White), but is drawn to a tester at the institute responsible (Riz Ahmed). It’s an exceptional cast, and they fill out the premise with subtle inflections and authentic desire – the romantic wins out.

Rap Sh!t (Season 2)
Binge

Issa Rae’s follow-up to Insecure returns after a bracing but entertaining first season that found some telling angles in the story of a pair of Miami friends, Shawna (Aida Osman) and Mia (KaMillion), who took another shot at turning hip-hop skills into a career. The new season doesn’t so much give them success as the realisation of what attaining it requires. Whether touring with a successful artist they don’t respect or fielding management offers – their scrappy current manager, Chastity (Jonica Booth), mainly handles sex workers – the pair walk a comically fine line.

John Gotti in Get Gotti.Credit: Netflix

Get Gotti
Netflix

John Gotti, who died in a US federal prison in 2002, was the last infamous organised crime figure in America. The head of New York’s Gambino crime family, his name lives on in numerous hip-hop songs and fictional screen portrayals. This three-part documentary covers the Gotti’s high-profile career as “the Dapper Don”, with a focus on the succession of trials that finally led to a conviction in 1992. It’s fast-paced, and a little too impressed with Gotti, but the mix of archival footage, wiretap excerpts, and pungent testimony from associates and adversaries is mob lore catnip.

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